Molecular Kramers degeneracy and non-Abelian adiabatic phase factors

Abstract

For a molecular system with an odd number of electrons, the electronic Hamiltonian possesses a twofold Kramers degeneracy for all nuclear configurations. It is shown that this leads to a non-Abelian gauge-field term in the effective nuclear Hamiltonian, with permissible gauge transformations belonging to SU(2). This should lead to observable effects analogous to the Berry phase for the nondegenerate case. In particular, an atom in a slowly rotating electric field exhibits changes in its component of angular momentum along the field because of the non-Abelian phase factor.