In classical mechanics, the Hannay angle is a mechanics analogue of the whirling geometric phase (or Berry phase). It was named after John Hannay of the University of Bristol, UK. Hannay first described the angle in 1985, extending the ideas of the recently formalized Berry phase to classical mechanics.
The Hannay angle is defined in the context of action-angle coordinates. In an initially time-invariant system, an action variable is a constant. After introducing a periodic perturbation , the action variable becomes an adiabatic invariant, and the Hannay angle for its corresponding angle variable can be calculated according to the path integral that represents an evolution in which the perturbation gets back to the original value[1]
Further information: Geometric phase § The Foucault pendulum |
The Foucault pendulum is an example from classical mechanics that is sometimes also used to illustrate the Berry phase. Below we study the Foucault pendulum using action-angle variables. For simplicity, we will avoid using the Hamilton–Jacobi equation, which is employed in the general protocol.
We consider a plane pendulum with frequency under the effect of Earth's rotation whose angular velocity is with amplitude denoted as . Here, the direction points from the center of the Earth to the pendulum. The Lagrangian for the pendulum is