Nonadiabatic factor accompanying magnetic translation of a charged particle

Abstract

The quantum adiabatic theorem incorporating the Berry phase phenomenon can be characterized as a factorization of the time evolution operator into a path-dependent geometric factor, a usual dynamical factor and a non-adiabatic factor that approaches the identity in the adiabatic limit. We study a case where all these three factors can be constructed explicitly and where the instantaneous Hamiltonian has infinitely degenerate energy eigenstates associated with magnetic translation symmetry. Significance of the non-adiabatic factor in terms of transition probabilities is discussed.