Nonquantized Dirac Monopoles and Strings in the Berry Phase of Anisotropic Spin Systems

The Berry phase of an anisotropic spin system that is adiabatically rotated along a closed circuit C is investigated. It is shown that the Berry phase consists of two contributions: (i) a geometric contribution which can be interpreted as the flux through C of a nonquantized Dirac monopole, and (ii) a topological contribution which can be interpreted as the flux through C of a Dirac string carrying a nonquantized flux, i.e., a spin analogue of the Aharonov-Bohm effect. Various experimental consequences of this novel effect are discussed