Spin tunneling in the particular case of the magnetic molecular cluster
octanuclear iron(III), Fe8, is treated by an effective Hamiltonian that allows
for an angle-based description of the process. The presence of an external
magnetic field along the easy axis is also taken into account in this
description. Analytic expressions for the energy levels and barriers are
obtained from a harmonic approximation of the potential function which give
results in good agreement with the experimental results. The energy splittings
due to spin tunneling is treated in an adapted WKB approach and it is shown
that the present description can give results to a reliable degree of accuracy.Comment: 17 pages, 2 figures, preprint submitted to Physica