Entanglement, Berry phases, and level crossings for the atomic Breit-Rabi Hamiltonian

Sangchul Oh, Zhen Huang, Uri Peskin, and Sabre Kais

Phys. Rev. A 78, 062106 – Published 9 December 2008

Abstract

The relation between level crossings, entanglement, and Berry phases is investigated for the Breit-Rabi Hamiltonian of hydrogen and sodium atoms, describing a hyperfine interaction of electron and nuclear spins in a magnetic field. It is shown that the entanglement between nuclear and electron spins is maximum at avoided crossings. An entangled state encircling avoided crossings acquires a marginal Berry phase of a subsystem like an instantaneous eigenstate moving around real crossings accumulates a Berry phase. Especially, the nodal points of a marginal Berry phase correspond to the avoided crossing points.

Received 16 October 2008

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.78.062106

Authors & Affiliations

Sangchul Oh^1,*, Zhen Huang², Uri Peskin³, and Sabre Kais^1,2,†

¹Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems, Noethnitzer Strasse 38, D-01187 Dresden, Germany
²Purdue University, Department of Chemistry, West Lafayette, Indiana 47906 USA
³Technion Israel Institute of Technology, Schulich Faculty of Chemistry, IL-32000 Haifa, Israel

^*scoh@pks.mpg.de
^†Corresponding author: kais@purdue.edu

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Issue

Vol. 78, Iss. 6 — December 2008

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