Thomas Rotation and Polarised Light: A non-Abelian Geometric Phase in Optics

Details Thomas Rotation and Polarised Light: A non-Abelian Geometric Phase in Optics Thomas Rotation and Polarised Light: A non-Abelian Geometric Phase in Optics

1997-05-13

arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9705023v1

Physics

Quantum Physics

14 pages, Latex file, one figure, to appear in Pramana J. Phys

Scientific paper

We describe a non-Abelian Berry phase in polarisation optics, suggested by an analogy due to Nityananda between boosts in special relativity and the effect of elliptic dichroism on polarised light. The analogy permits a simple optical realization of the non-Abelian gauge field describing Thomas rotation. We also show how Thomas rotation can be understood geometrically on the Poincar\'{e} sphere in terms of the Pancharatnam phase.

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