Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-theoretical-physics-ii-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2014/paper-1/1/a/solution

An initially occupied, isolated instantaneous energy eigenstate follows its changing eigenspace, acquiring a dynamical phase and generally a Berry phase. For smooth nondegenerate evolution, a useful local smallness condition is
A nonvanishing spectral gap and suitably smooth, slow driving throughout the evolution are needed; the local inequality alone is not a universal long-time error bound. Gap closure invalidates the simple nondegenerate approximation. A separated degenerate eigenspace may mix internally even when transitions out of it are suppressed.

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