Geometrical phase factors and higher-order adiabatic approximations (Q579721)

A detailed study of Schrödinger equations having several components with a time-dependent Hamiltonian is carried out, paying particular attention to the geometrical nature of these equations. Two features of such a study are presented: (i) it is shown that the diagonalization process of such equations possesses a certain arbitrariness which can be interpreted precisely as a local gauge degree of freedom. For a two- component problem, this gauge symmetry structure is determined completely in terms of the corresponding geometrical structure, i.e., a differentiable principal fibre bundle equipped with a connection form. This geometrical structure, and particularly the notion of parallelism provided by it, is used subsequently to show that the wavefunction factorizes into two parts, one of which is thereby given a purely geometrical interpretation. (ii) Second, it is shown that the adiabatic theorem, well-known to hold in the extreme adiabatic limit, can be generalized in such a way that higher-order terms with respect to the adiabatic approximation can be calculated systematically. This part of the study is carried out for a reduced Schrödinger equation given subsequently after the aforementioned geometrical factorization. Clarification on how the combination of these two results allows one to study the now popular subject of ''Berry's phase'' for a wider class of systems than those in the earlier literature is given. Applications of the present result to certain systems, including the neutrino propagation in matter, are also discussed.