Thomas Rotation and Polarised Light: A non-Abelian Geometric Phase in Optics
Quantum Physics
2016-09-08 v1
Abstract
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.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.quant-ph/9705023,
title = {Thomas Rotation and Polarised Light: A non-Abelian Geometric Phase in Optics},
author = {Joseph Samuel and Supurna Sinha},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:quant-ph/9705023},
year = {2016}
}
Comments
14 pages, Latex file, one figure, to appear in Pramana J. Phys