Coherent states, phases and symplectic areas of geodesic triangles

Abstract

On certain manifolds, the phase which appears in the scalar product of two coherent state vectors is twice the symplectic area of the geodesic triangle determined by the corresponding points on the manifold and the origin of the system of coordinates. This result is proved for compact Hermitian symmetric spaces using the generalization via coherent states of the shape invariant for geodesic triangles and re-obtained on the complex Grassmannian by brute- force calculation.