A common strategy to measure the Abelian geometric phase for a qubit is to let it evolve along an ‘orange slice’ shaped path connecting two antipodal points on the Bloch sphere by two different semi- great circles. Since the dynamical phases vanish for such paths, this allows for direct measurement of the geometric phase. Here, we generalize the orange slice setting to the non-Abelian case. The proposed method to measure the non-Abelian geometric phase can be implemented in a cyclic chain of four qubits with controllable interactions.

Geometric measure of entanglement and geometric phase have recently been used to analyze quantum phase transition in the XY spin chain. We unify these two approaches by showing that the geometric entanglement and the geometric phase are respectively the real and imaginary parts of a complex-valued geometric entanglement, which can be investigated in typical quantum interferometry experiments. We argue that the singular behavior of the complex-valued geometric entanglement at a quantum critical point is a characteristic of any quantum phase transition, by showing that the underlying mechanism is the occurrence of level crossings associated with the underlying Hamiltonian.

The concept of off-diagonal geometric phase (GP) has been introduced in order to recover interference information about the geometry of quantal evolution where the standard GPs are not well-defined. In this Letter, we propose a physical setting for realizing non-Abelian off-diagonal GPs. The proposed non-Abelian off-diagonal GPs can be implemented in a cyclic chain of four qubits with controllable nearest-neighbor interactions. Our proposal seems to be within reach in various nano-engineered systems and therefore opens up for first experimental test of the non-Abelian off-diagonal GP.

We study the Uhlmann holonomy [Rep. Math. Phys. 24, 229 (1986)] of quantum states for hydrogen-like atoms, where the intrinsic spin and orbital angular momentum are coupled by the spin-orbit interaction and subject to a slowly varying magnetic field. We show that the holonomy for the orbital angular momentum and spin subsystems is non-Abelian, while the holonomy of the whole system is Abelian. Quantum entanglement in the states of the whole system is crucially related to the non-Abelian gauge structure of the subsystems. We analyze the phase of the Wilson loop variable associated with the Uhlmann holonomy, and find a relation between the phase of the whole system with corresponding marginal phases. Based on the result for the model system we provide evidence that the phase of the Wilson loop variable and the mixed-state geometric phase [Phys. Rev. Lett. 85, 2845 (2000)] are in general inequivalent.

Geometric manipulation of a quantum system offers a method for fast, universal, and robust quantum information processing. Here, we propose a scheme for universal all-geometric quantum computation using non-adiabatic quantum holonomies. We propose three different realizations of the scheme based on an unconventional use of quantum dot and single-molecule magnet devices,which offer promising scalability and robust efficiency.