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arXiv:1509.01646 · The European Physical Journal C

Aharonov–Bohm phase for an electromagnetic wave background

Max Bright, Douglas Singleton, Atsushi Yoshida

Published Sep 1, 2015• 10 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

The canonical Aharonov–Bohm effect is usually studied with time-independent potentials. In this work, we investigate the Aharonov–Bohm phase acquired by a charged particle moving in time-dependent potentials. In particular, we focus on the case of a charged particle moving in the time-varying field of a plane electromagnetic wave. We work out the Aharonov–Bohm phase using both the potential (i.e. $$\oint A_\mu \mathrm{d}x ^\mu $$ ) and the field (i.e. $$\frac{1}{2}\int F_{\mu \nu } \mathrm{d}\sigma ^{\mu \nu }$$ ) forms of the Aharonov–Bohm phase. We give conditions in terms of the parameters of the system (frequency of the electromagnetic wave, the size of the space–time loop, amplitude of the electromagnetic wave) under which the time-varying Aharonov–Bohm effect could be observed.

DOI
10.1140/epjc/s10052-015-3670-8

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We simulated time-varying Aharanov-Bohm effect (ABE) under time-independent magnetic field using Matlab, taking into account the influence of time-varying magnetic field on charged particles moving in a two-dimensional plane. According to our models, we discovered the time evolution of wave function and interference patterns. We also developed two mathematical models to analyze this phenomenon, of which the first mode focuses on the time evolution of the wave function, governed by the time-dependent Schrödinger equation incorporating electromagnetic potentials, while the second one is responsible for simulating the resulting interference patterns by modifying the intensity of wave packet based on the frequency-dependent phase shift caused by the sinusoidal magnetic field in the solenoid. Our results align with theoretical expectations and provide new insights into the frequency-dependent nature of the time-varying ABE.
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In this paper we give a covariant expression for Aharonov–Casher phase. This expression is a combination of the canonical electric field, Aharonov–Casher phase plus a magnetic field phase shift. We use this covariant expression for the Aharonov–Casher phase to investigate the case of a neutral particle with a non-zero magnetic moment moving in the time dependent electric and magnetic fields of a plane electromagnetic wave background. We focus on the case where the magnetic moment of the particle is oriented so that both the electric and magnetic fields lead to non-zero phases, and we look at the interplay between these electric and magnetic phases.
The gauge invariance of the Aharonov-Bohm (AB) effect with a quantum treatment for the electromagnetic field is demonstrated. We provide an exact solution for the electromagnetic ground energy due to the interaction of the quantum electromagnetic field with the classical charges and currents that act as sources of the potentials in a classical description, in the Lorenz gauge. Then, we use first-order perturbation theory to compute an extra change on the electromagnetic ground energy due to the presence of a quantum charged particle with known wave function in the system. This energy in general depends on the quantum particle path in an interferometer, which results in an AB phase difference between the paths. The gauge invariance of this AB phase difference is then shown for the magnetic, electric, and the recently proposed electrodynamic versions of the AB effect. However, the AB phase difference could depend on the gauge for nonclosed paths, which reinforces the view that it only can be measured in closed paths.
We analyse the physical meaning of the Aharonov–Bohm (AB) phase based on its representation through electromagnetic (EM) potentials as a sum of four components, which, in addition to the known electric and magnetic phase components, contains two more terms recently disclosed by our team in the analysis of quantum phase effects for dipoles and charges, and which we named the complementary electric AB phase and the complementary magnetic AB phase. Using the complete expression for the AB phase, we reveal that the phase component, explicitly depending on time, is determined by the interactional electric energy, while the phase component, explicitly depending on the velocity of charge, is determined by the interactional EM momentum for an isolated system ‘source of EM field and charge’. These findings shed new light on the origin of the AB phase and, in particular, allow us to generalize the de Broglie relationship and the Heisenberg uncertainty relations for a charged particle in an EM field.