 Solution

For a trajectory connecting the degenerate minima in infinite Euclidean time, the first integral gives $m{\dot{q}}^2/2=V(q)$. The quartic double-well instanton and its reverse areTheir action isThe instanton fluctuation prefactor $K$ has dimensions of inverse time. It incorporates nonzero Gaussian fluctuation eigenvalues and the translation zero-mode Jacobian; a conventional determinant expression iswith common endpoint regularization and the prime removing the translation mode. Only its positive quantum tunnelling rate $\kappa =K{e}^{-S_0/\hslash }$ is needed here.

In the dilute instanton gas, well-separated crossings alternate in direction. Integrating $n$ ordered centers gives ${\tau }^n/n!$. A path returning to the same well has $n$ an even number, and one connecting opposite wells has $n$ an odd number. The common leading harmonic endpoint factor follows from the supplied harmonic oscillator transition kernel:Expanding these functions gives the sums over even numbers and odd numbers, with the position-kernel normalization ${\mathcal{A}}_0$ that its abbreviated formula suppresses. Validity requires $S_0/\hslash \gg 1$, $\omega \tau \gg 1$ and $\kappa \ll \omega$, so typical crossing separation greatly exceeds an instanton width. Local anharmonic corrections replace the harmonic well energy by its perturbatively corrected value; the leading formula does not claim uniformly negligible relative error at arbitrarily large $\tau$.

The two exponents identify the double-well tunneling splitting:The superposition with an even spatial wavefunction is the lower state. Coherent quantum tunnelling removes the classical degeneracy, and the exponentially small splitting sets the long quantum tunnelling timescale.