Abstract

We have studied experimentally the time-reversal symmetry of Pancharatnam’s phase, an optical manifestation of Berry’s topological phase, through the use of optical phase conjugation. Pancharatnam’s phase is the phase acquired by a beam of light when its polarization state is changed successively so that a closed path is traced out on the surface of the Poincare sphere. Numerically, this phase is equal to minus one half the solid angle subtended by the closed path. Pancharatnam’s phase, due to its topological origin, is independent of the system’s Hamiltonian, including its symmetry properties, and, therefore, remains odd even when the time-reversal symmetry of the total system is broken.

© 1988 Optical Society of America