Geometrical Phases from Global Gauge Invariance of Nonlinear Classical Field Theories

Abstract

We show that the geometrical phases recently discovered in quantum mechanics also occur naturally in the theory of any classical complex multicomponent field satisfying nonlinear equations derived from a Lagrangean which is invariant under gauge transformations of the first kind. Some examples are the paraxial wave equation for nonlinear optics, and Ginzburg-Landau equations for complex order parameters in condensed-matter physics.