  Motivated by the important role played by the phase of the fermion
determinant in the investigation of the sign problem in lattice QCD at nonzero
baryon density, we derive an analytical formula for the average phase factor of
the fermion determinant for general topology in the microscopic limit of chiral
random matrix theory at nonzero chemical potential, for both the quenched and
the unquenched case. The formula is a nontrivial extension of the expression
for zero topology derived earlier by Splittorff and Verbaarschot. Our
analytical predictions are verified by detailed numerical random matrix
simulations of the quenched theory.
