Applications of the Complex Geometric "Phase" for Meta-stable Systems

Garrison and Wright showed that upon undergoing cyclic quantum evolution a meta-stable state acquires both a geometric phase and a geometric decay probability. This is described by a complex geometric ``phase'' associated with the cyclic evolution of two states and is closely related to the two state formalism developed by Aharonov et al.. Applications of the complex geometric phase to the Born--Oppenheimer approximation and the Aharonov--Bohm effect are considered. A simple experiment based on the optical properties of absorbing birefringent crystals is proposed.