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Polarization Science and Remote Sensing

Introduction to the wave description of geometric phase

Luis A. Garza-Soto, Nathan A. Hagen, Dorilian Lopez-Mago, Yukitoshi Otani

Published Oct 3, 2023• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We present a summarized and simplified introduction to our wave description of geometric phase. We start by discussing the addition of cosine waves of different amplitudes and a phase between them, from which immediately arises the geometric phase in 1D. We then expand on the analysis to the 2D case using the orthogonal components of a polarized light wave. We then show a graphic visualization that facilitates the analysis of geometric phase and use it to quantify the geometric phase obtained by passing different states of polarization through a quarter wave plate.

DOI
10.1117/12.2677214

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We present a summarized and simplified introduction to our wave description of geometric phase. We start by discussing the addition of cosine waves of different amplitudes and a phase between them, from which immediately arises the geometric phase in 1D. We then expand on the analysis to the 2D case using the orthogonal components of a polarized light wave. We then show a graphic visualization that facilitates the analysis of geometric phase and use it to quantify the geometric phase obtained by passing different states of polarization through a quarter wave plate.
Since Pancharatnam's 1956 discovery of optical geometric phase and Berry's 1984 discovery of geometric phase in quantum systems, researchers analyzing geometric phase have focused almost exclusively on algebraic approaches using the Jones calculus, or on spherical trigonometry approaches using the Poincaré sphere. The abstracted mathematics of the former and the abstracted geometry of the latter obscure the physical mechanism that generates geometric phase. We show that optical geometric phase derives entirely from the superposition of waves and the resulting shift in the location of the wave maximum. This wave-based model provides a way to visualize how geometric phase arises from relationships between waves, and from the transformations induced by optical elements. We also derive the relationship between the geometric phase of a wave by itself and the phase exhibited by an interferogram, and provide the conditions under which the two match one another.
The wave function of a quantum system may acquire an additional phase factor (the geometric phase), when its parameters undergo a cyclic change. An optical manifestation of the geometric phase is the change in the phase of a light wave produced when its state of polarization is taken around a circuit on the Poincare sphere. This phase change can be verified by interferometric measurements. We describe an interferometer in which the two beams traverse the same path in opposite directions, so that their optical paths are always equal, and the phase difference between them is varied by operating on the geometric phase. Measurements made with this interferometer, at a light level at which the probability of more than one photon being present simultaneously in the interferometer was negligibly small, confirmed that the interference effects observed due to the geometric phase persist down to the single photon level.
The wave superposition model of the geometric phase shows how the addition of waves creates a shift in the resulting wave position. While previous work focused on a basis of linearly polarized light waves and the Pancharatnam-Berry phase, we show how the spin-redirection phase (Rytov-Vladimirsky-Berry phase) can also be derived from the same approach of wave superposition, using rotating vectors to represent the superposing oscillations. The result is the first derivation of the spin-redirection phase using wave superposition. We illustrate this approach with two classic examples of the geometric phase of rotations in space: a system of three fold mirrors and the helically coiled fiber.
Within the new description of the polarization structure of quantum light (given in Part I) some types of generalized coherent states related to the polarization SU(2) group are examined. With their help we give a quasiclassical description of polarization properties of light fields and discuss the concept of squeezing and uncertainty relations for multimode light in the polarization quantum optics. As a consequence, a new classification of polarization states of quantum light is obtained. We also derive geometric phases acquired by different quantum light beams transmitted through "polarization rotators".
Unitary evolutions of a qubit are traditionally represented geometrically as rotations of the Bloch sphere, but the composition of such evolutions is handled algebraically through matrix multiplication [of SU(2) or SO(3) matrices]. Hamilton's construct, called turns, provides for handling the latter pictorially through the addition of directed great circle arcs on the unit sphere S${}^{2}\ensuremath{\subset}{\mathbb{R}}^{3}$, resulting in a non-Abelian version of the parallelogram law of vector addition of the Euclidean translation group. This construct is developed into a visual tool kit for handling the design of single-qubit unitary gates. As an application, it is shown, in the concrete case wherein the qubit is realized as polarization states of light, that all unitary gates can be realized conveniently through a universal gadget consisting of just two quarter-wave plates (QWP) and one half-wave plate (HWP). The analysis and results easily transcribe to other realizations of the qubit: The case of NMR is obtained by simply substituting $\ensuremath{\pi}/2$ and $\ensuremath{\pi}$ pulses respectively for QWPs and HWPs, the phases of the pulses playing the role of the orientation of fast axes of these plates.