Dynamical quenching of tunneling in molecular magnets

•Single molecular magnets under rapidly oscillating magnetic fields is studied.•It is shown that this system displays the quenching of tunneling processes.•Our findings provide a control of quantum molecular magnets via terahertz radiation.

It is shown that a single molecular magnet placed in a rapidly oscillating magnetic field displays the phenomenon of quenching of tunneling processes. The results open a way to manipulate the quantum states of molecular magnets by means of radiation in the terahertz range. Our analysis separates the time evolution into slow and fast components thereby obtaining an effective theory for the slow dynamics. This effective theory presents quenching of the tunnel effect, in particular, stands out its difference with the so-called coherent destruction of tunneling. We support our prediction with numerical evidence based on an exact solution of Schrödinger's equation.