Observation of Geometric Phases for Three-Level Systems using NMR Interferometry

Geometric phase (GP) independent of energy and time rely only on the geometry of state space. It has been argued to have potential fault tolerance and plays an important role in quantum information and quantum computation. We present the first experiment for producing and measuring an Abelian geometric phase shift in a three-level system by using NMR interferometry. In contrast to existing experiments, based on the geometry of $S^2$, our experiment concerns the geometric phase with the geometry of $SU(3)/U(2)$. Two interacting qubits have been used to provide such a three-dimensional Hilbert space.