Geometric phases in classical and quantum mechanics (Q1867633): Difference between revisions

The study of geometric phases is a beautiful and important subject of mathematical physics which has a wide range of physical applications, and which shows in a nice way how non-trivial geometric structures appear naturally in theoretical physics -- even in areas (like quantum mechanics) where they are originally not expected. The book under review provides a unified treatment of geometric phases in quantum and classical mechanics, which is mainly based on fiber bundle theory. The book consists of six chapters each of which is complemented by a list of problems and a short guide to the literature. Chapter 1 starts with a brief overview over some material from differential geometry which is used throughout the rest of the book. This includes differentiable manifolds, differential forms, de Rham cohomology, Lie groups and algebras, fiber bundles, characteristic classes, homotopy theory and Hopf fibrations. All this is treated on 72 pages, which clearly shows that this chapter is not intended as a text to learn differential geometry. For the more experienced reader, however, it provides a nice resource to look up all relevant definitions and theorems without an external reference. Chapter 2 is devoted to the Berry phase. After a discussion of the adiabatic theorem, the original derivation of Berry is presented together with general remarks about phases and in particular the difference between global and relative phases. This material is then reformulated in fiber bundle language, and it is shown that the Berry phase can be interpreted as a holonomy of a particular connection (called Berry-Simon connection). The chapter concludes with a discussion of the non-abelian Wilczek-Zee phase, which generalizes Berry's ideas to Hamiltonians with degenerate eigenvalues. In Chapter 3 and 4 the authors switch to classical mechanics and present the Hannay angle as the classical analog of the Berry phase. Chapter 3 starts with a short review of symplectic mechanics and integrable systems, and discusses the averaging principle for two-dimensional phase spaces and the classical adiabatic theorem. With these prerequisites the Hannay angle is then introduced as a geometric shift in the angle variable. After a discussion of group actions, momentum maps and the Marsden-Weinstein phase space reduction, the Hannay angle is reinterpreted in Chapter 4 in terms of fiber bundles as a holonomy of the Hannay-Berry connection. Both chapters are accompanied by several examples (in particular the rigid body in Chapter 4) and a discussion of the relation between Berry phases and Hannay angles within the semi-classical approximation of quantum mechanics (in Chapter 3). With Chapter 5 the authors return to quantum mechanics. The space of pure states (i.e. one-dimensional projectors on a given Hilbert space) is treated as a Kähler manifold and the Schrödinger equation is reinterpreted in terms of Hamiltonian vector fields. Based on this structure the Aharanov-Anandan phase and the Pancharatnam phase are discussed. At the end of this chapter the authors pass to mixed states and the non-abelian geometric phase of Uhlmann. The last chapter is devoted to applications. Among the topics treated here are: Geometric phases in optics and molecular physics, Aharanov-Bohm effect and related subjects, quantum Hall effect, spin and statistics, and holonomic quantum computation. Summarizing I can say that this is a nice and well-written book about an interesting subject. It can be recommended to students and researchers in mathematics and theoretical physics with interests in geometric structures of theoretical physics and with sufficient knowledge about differential geometry.