Berry’s Phase. A Lost Article in Quantum Mechanics.

Yuriy Mokrousov

Charis Anastopoulos, Ntina Savvidou

Ali Mostafazadeh

An alternative interpretation of the quantum adiabatic approximation is presented. This interpretation is based on the ideas originally advocated by David Bohm in his quest for establishing a hidden variable alternative to quantum mechanics. It indicates that the validity of the quantum adiabatic approximation is a sufficient condition for the separability of the quantum action function in the time variable. The implications of this interpretation for Berry’s adiabatic phase and its semi-classical limit are also discussed. Probably one of the best recognized applications of the quantum adiabatic approximation [1, 2] is in Berry’s derivation of the adiabatic geometrical phases [3]. Following Berry’s, by now, classical article on the adiabatic geometric phase [3], Hannay proposed a classical analogue of Berry’s phase [4] and Berry [5] and Anandan [6] explored the semiclassical limit of Berry’s phase and the classical analogue of the general, non-adiabatic geometric phase [7], respectively. The purpose of this note is to provide an alternative interpretation of the quantum adiabatic approximation which yields a natural approach to study the semi-classical limit of this approximation and consequently Berry’s phase.

Lijing Tian, Zhi Yang, Q. W. Shi +2 more

The Berry phase has universal applications in various fields. Here, we explore the coupling effect on the Berry phase of a two-level system adiabatically driven by a rotating classical field and interacting with a single quantized mode. Our simulations clearly reveal that the Berry phase change is quadratic proportional to the coupling constant if it is less than the level spacing between neighboring instantaneous eigenstates. Remarkably, if the nearest neighbouring level spacing is comparable with the coupling constant, this simple quadratic dependence is lost. Around this resonance, the Berry phase can be significantly tuned by slightly adjusting the parameters, such as the coupling constant, the frequency of the quantized mode, and the transition frequency. These numerical results, agreeing well with the perturbation theory calculations, provide an alternative approach to tune the Berry phase near the resonance, which is useful in quantum information science, i.e. designing quantum logic gates.

Pratul Bandyopadhyay

Jisoon Ihm

Berry’s phase is typically realized in a system consisting of fast and slow variables, when the trajectory of the slow variable makes a closed loop. The quantum mechanical phase picked up by the fast variable while the slow variable traverses the loop has turned out to produce real physical effects through quantum interference. In this article, we investigate origins of Berry’s geometric phase and show that they are in general attributable to the broken time-reversal symmetry of the system. Our analysis leads to the classification of Berry’s phase for Hamiltonian systems in terms of symmetry properties under time-reversal operations. Spontaneous time-reversal symmetry-breaking of state vectors is shown to give rise to Berry’s phase as exemplified by a quantum-mechanical rotated hoop. A system with an explicitly time-reversal symmetry-breaking Hamiltonian is also demonstrated to exhibit nontrivial Berry’s phase. The quantization of the geometric phase associated with the real two-dimensional Hamiltonian having topological singularity is explained within the same framework. The unique role of the time-reversal operator among general antiunitary operators is also discussed.