Holonomy of a principal composite bundle connection, non-abelian geometric phases and gauge theory of gravity

Abstract

We show that the holonomy of a connection defined on a principal composite bundle is related by a non-abelian Stokes theorem to the composition of the holonomies associated with the connections of the component bundles of the composite. We apply this formalism to describe the non-abelian geometric phase (when the geometric phase generator does not commute with the dynamical phase generator). We find then an assumption to obtain a new kind of separation between the dynamical and the geometric phases. We also apply this formalism to the gauge theory of gravity in the presence of a Dirac spinor field in order to decompose the holonomy of the Lorentz connection into holonomies of the linear connection and of the Cartan connection.