We analyze the interference between tunneling paths that occurs for a spin system with both fourth-order and second-order transverse anisotropy. Using an instanton approach, we find that as the strength of the second-order transverse anisotropy is in
creased, the tunnel splitting is modulated, with zeros occurring periodically. This effect results from the interference of four tunneling paths connecting easy-axis spin orientations and occurs in the absence of any magnetic field.
We measure magnetization changes in a single crystal of the single-molecule magnet Fe8 when exposed to intense, short (<20 $mu$s) pulses of microwave radiation resonant with the m = 10 to 9 transition. We find that radiation induces a phonon bottlene
ck in the system with a time scale of ~5 $mu$s. The phonon bottleneck, in turn, drives the spin dynamics, allowing observation of thermally assisted resonant tunneling between spin states at the 100-ns time scale. Detailed numerical simulations quantitatively reproduce the data and yield a spin-phonon relaxation time of T1 ~ 40 ns.
