Geometric phase of an atom in a magnetic storage ring

P. Zhang, L. You

Published 2006-10-26, updated 2007-01-19Version 2

A magnetically trapped atom experiences an adiabatic geometric (Berry's) phase due to changing field direction. We investigate theoretically such an Aharonov-Bohm-like geometric phase for atoms adiabatically moving inside a storage ring as demonstrated in several recent experiments. Our result shows that this phase shift is easily observable in a closed loop interference experiment, and thus the shift has to be accounted for in the proposed inertial sensing applications. The spread in phase shift due to the atom transverse distribution is quantified through numerical simulations.