Kinematic approach to off-diagonal geometric phases of nondegenerate and degenerate mixed states

Off-diagonal geometric phases have been developed in order to provide information of the geometry of paths that connect noninterfering quantal states. We propose a kinematic approach to off-diagonal geometric phases for pure and mixed states. We further extend the mixed-state concept proposed in [Phys. Rev. Lett. 90, 050403 (2003)] to degenerate density operators. The first- and second-order off-diagonal geometric phases are analyzed for unitarily evolving pairs of pseudopure states.