Berry phase in a non-isolated system

Abstract

We investigate the effect of the environment on a Berry phase measurement involving a spin-half. We model the spin+environment using a biased spin-boson Hamiltonian with a time-dependent magnetic field. We find that, contrary to naive expectations, the Berry phase acquired by the spin can be observed, but only on timescales which are neither too short nor very long. However this Berry phase is not the same as for the isolated spin-half. It does not have a simple geometric interpretation in terms of the adiabatic evolution of either bare spin-states or the dressed spin-resonances that remain once we have traced out the environment. This result is crucial for proposed Berry phase measurements in superconducting nanocircuits as dissipation there is known to be significant.