Berry’s phase and weak localization in the presence of spin-orbit interaction

Abstract

Weak localization due to coherent back-scattering in the presence of spin-orbit coupling is examined for a possible manifestation of Berry's phase. The pairs of counter-propagating wave-amplitudes along the time-reversed Boltzoannian paths are shown to accumulate random relative phase which is purely geometric in the adiabatic limit. The resulting dephasing time 7, has quartic field dependence and scales as c;'-.and c ~ ?-respectively<. In two and three dimensions, where c1 is the spin-orbit impurity concentration. Optimal experimental conditions are discussed.