Dynamics of tunneling centers (TC) in metallic systems is studied, using the
technique of bosonization. The interaction of the TC with the conduction
electrons of the metal involves two processes, namely, the screening of the TC
by electrons, and the so-called electron assisted tunneling. The presence of
the latter process leads to a different form of the renormalized tunneling
frequency of the TC, and the tunneling motion is damped with a temperature
dependent relaxation rate. As the temperature is lowered, the relaxation rate
per temperature shows a steep rise as opposed to that in the absence of
electron assisted process. It is expected that this behavior should be observed
at very low temperatures in a careful experiment. The present work thus tries
to go beyond the existing work on the {\it dynamics} of a two-level system in
metals, by treating the electron assisted process.Comment: REVTeX twocolumn format, 5 pages, two PostScript figures available on
request. Preprint # : imsc 94/3