The Kink of Gravitational Waves in a Vibrating Detector: An Emergent Berry Phase

The detection of gravitational waves (GWs) has marked an advent of new era in the domain of astrophysics and general relativity. Using the framework of interaction between GWs and a point particle-like detector, within linearized gravity approach, we build a toy model which has potential to detect GWs. The detector is in simultaneous interaction with GWs and an external time-dependent (tunable) two-dimensional harmonic potential. We discover that in adiabatic approximation, gravitational wave interaction can lead to a geometric phase in the quantum states of the detector which can be controlled by tuning the frequency of the external harmonic potential. We argue that such geometric phase detection may serve as a manifestation of the footprint of GWs. More importantly, our theoretical model may be capable of providing a layout to build a future detector for the detection of very small frequency (< 5 Hz) GWs.