Noncommutative geometry and non-Abelian Berry phase in the wave-packet dynamics of Bloch electrons Original Research Article

Motivated by a recent proposal on the possibility of observing a monopole in the band structure, and by an increasing interest in the role of Berry phase in spintronics, we studied the adiabatic motion of a wave packet of Bloch functions, under a perturbation varying slowly and incommensurately to the lattice structure. We show, using only the fundamental principles of quantum mechanics, that the effective wave-packet dynamics is conveniently described by a set of equations of motion (EOM) for a semiclassical particle coupled to a non-Abelian gauge field associated with a geometric Berry phase.