Quantum Institute: Visitor Schedule

The Quantum Lunch is regularly held on Thursdays in the Theoretical Division Conference Room, TA-3, Building 123, Room 121.
For more information, contact Diego Dalvit.

Thursday, July 17, 2008
12:30 PM to 2 PM

Speaker: Fernando Lombardo, University of Buenos Aires

Technical Host: Diego Dalvit

TOPIC: Environmentally induced correction to the geometric phase in a two-level system

Abstract
Since the work of Berry, the notion of geometric phases has been shown to have important consequences for quantum systems. Berry demostrated that closed quantum system could acquire phases that are geometric in nature, besides the usual dynamical phase. However there has been many assumptions about the time scale at which the geometric phase can be measured, there has been no reported observation of geometric phases for mixed states under non-unitary evolution yet. We study not only how geometric phases are corrected by the inevitable presence of an environment, but also discuss the appearence of decoherence effects. These should be taken into account when planning experimental setups to study the geometric phase in the non-unitary regime.