Is the molecular berry phase an artifact of the Born-Oppenheimer approximation?

Seung Kyu Min*, Ali Abedi, Kwang S. Kim, E. K.U. Gross

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

99 Scopus citations

Abstract

We demonstrate that the molecular Berry phase and the corresponding nonanalyticity in the electronic Born-Oppenheimer wave function is, in general, not a true topological feature of the exact solution of the full electron-nuclear Schrödinger equation. For a numerically exactly solvable model we show that a nonanalyticity, and the associated geometric phase, only appear in the limit of infinite nuclear mass, while a perfectly smooth behavior is found for any finite nuclear mass.

Original languageEnglish
Article number263004
JournalPhysical Review Letters
Volume113
Issue number26
DOIs
StatePublished - 30 Dec 2014
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2014 American Physical Society.

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