Geometric phases in optical interferometry

H. Kobayashi

Xin-Ding Zhang, Guang-Fei Yang, Wenjie Liu +1 more

S. A. Werner

Poonam Mehta, Joseph Samuel, Supurna Sinha

We propose a polarized intensity interferometry experiment, which measures the nonlocal Pancharatnam phase acquired by a pair of Hanbury-Brown--Twiss photons. The setup involves two polarized thermal sources illuminating two polarized detectors. Varying the relative polarization angle of the detectors introduces a two-photon geometric phase. Local measurements at either detector do not reveal the effects of the phase, which is an optical analog of the multiparticle Aharonov-Bohm effect. The geometric phase sheds light on the three-slit experiment and suggests ways of tuning entanglement.

修平 玉手

Bernard Zygelman

We illustrate how geometric gauge forces and topological phase effects emerge in atomic and molecular systems without employing assumptions that rely on adiabaticity. We show how geometric magnetism may be harnessed to engineer novel quantum devices including a velocity sieve, a component in mass spectrometers, for neutral atoms. We introduce and outline a possible experimental setup that demonstrates topological interferometry for neutral spin-1/2 systems. For that two-level system, we study the transition from Abelian to non-Abelian behavior and explore its relation to the molecular Aharonov-Bohm effect.