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 Boltzmannian paths are shown to accumulate random relative phase which is purely geometric in the adiabatic limit. The resulting dephasing time τ_so has quartic field dependence and scales as C_i^-1 and C_i^-⅔, respectively, in two and three dimensions, where C_i is the spin-orbit impurity concentration. Optimal experimental conditions are discussed.