Geometric Phase through Spatial Potential Engineering

We propose a spatial analog of the Berry's phase mechanism for the coherent manipulation of states of nonrelativistic massive particles moving in a two-dimensional landscape. In our construction the temporal modulation of the system Hamiltonian is replaced by a modulation of the confining potential along the transverse direction of the particle propagation. By properly tuning the model parameters the resulting scattering input-output relations exhibit a Wilczek-Zee non-Abelian phase shift contribution that is intrinsically geometrical, hence insensitive to the specific details of the potential landscape. A theoretical derivation of the effect is provided together with practical examples.