Phys. Rev. Lett. 60, 2339–2342 (1988)General Setting for Berry's PhaseReceived 30 November 1987; published in the issue dated 6 June 1988 It is shown that Berry's phase appears in a more general context than realized so far. The evolution of the quantum system need be neither unitary nor cyclic and may be interrupted by quantum measurements. A key ingredient in this generalization is the use of some ideas introduced by Pancharatnam in his study of the interference of polarized light, which, when carried over to quantum mechanics, allow a meaningful comparison of the phase between any two nonorthogonal vectors in Hilbert space. © 1988 The American Physical Society URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.60.2339
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevLett.60.2339
PACS:
03.65.Bz, 02.40.+m
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