In recent past we have studied the connections between Coiled-light phase and Pancharatnam phase. There are no publications on this work. Pancharatnam phase is the phase that arises when the state of polarization of the light goes through a cyclic path in polarization state space. For a comprehensive review article on Pancharatnam phase read: R. Bhandari Phys. Rep. 281, 1 (1997).
A past presentation on the topic was:
"Toward a Unified Optical Geometric Phase: Equivalences between Coiled Light and Pancharatnam Phases," E.J. Galvez and H.I. Sztul, 1999 Atomic Physics Gordon Conference, Plymouth NH.
Below is Henry Sztul working on the experiments on the summer of 1999:
More recently Matt Pysher '04, James Martin '03 and Justin Spencer '04 have been doing measurements of the Pancharatnam phase of single photons. This work is still ongoing. A description this work is forthcoming.
[Background image is an interference pattern using a corner-cube Michelson Interferometer taken by Chris Eger '99: when the two corner cubes are not axially oriented 60 degrees from each other the non-polarization-conserving properties of the reflections in the corner cubes manifest--the interference pattern is not smooth and continuous as with a plane mirror interferometer.]
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