BERRY, M.V. (MICHAEL VICTOR) - THE DISCOVERY OF THE "BERRY-PHASE"

Quantal phase factors accompanying adiabatic changes.

London, Royal Society, 1984. Royal8vo. Full buckram, gilt lettering to spine.In: "Proceedings of the Royal Society of London", Series A, vol. 392. IV,478 pp. (Entire volume offered). Berry's paper: pp. 45-57. Clean and fine.

First printing of the paper in which Berry describes his discovery of the "Berry phase", a unifying concept in quantum mechanics.

"In 1983, Berry made the surprising discovery that a quantum system adiabatically transported round a closed circuit in the space of external parameters acquires, besides the familiar dynamical phase, a non-integrable phase depending only on the geometry of the circuit. This Berry phase, which had been overlooked for more than half a century, provides us a very deep insight on the geometric structure of quantum mechanics and gives rise to various observable effects. The concept of the Berry phase has now become a central unifying concept in quantum mechanics, with applications in fields ranging from chemistry to condensed matter physics.
In particular, the Berry phase plays an important role in modern magnetism, an allows to reach a deeper understanding of a broad range of phenomena such as the spin-orbit coupling, the Aharonov-Bohm effect, the quantum Hall effect, the anomalous Hall effect, the magnon dynamics, the tunneling of magnetization in molecular magnets, etc. Further, in the light of the Berry phase, a number of new phenomena can be predicted in ferromagnets with a textured magnetization or in semiconductors with spin-orbit coupling." (Patrick Bruno).

Order-nr.: 47169