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arXiv:2312.16133

The non-Abelian Aharonov-Bohm effect

P. A. Horváthy

Published Dec 26, 2023• 0 citations
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Abstract

The scattering of a nucleon beam around a cylinder containing a non-Abelian flux is studied. We confirm all the previsions of Wu and Yang. We consider the generalization to the gauge group $SU(N)$, and derive a classification scheme. Isospin precession is recovered also at the classical limit.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.2312.16133

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The scattering of a nucleon beam around a cylinder containing a non-Abelian flux is studied. We confirm all the previsions of Wu and Yang. We consider the generalization to the gauge group SU(N)SU(N)SU(N), and derive a classification scheme. Isospin precession is recovered also at the classical limit.
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The Aharonov–Bohm effect in general gauge theories, for particles in gauge-curvature-free regions, is studied using the quantum mechanical propagator in the form of a Feynman sum over paths. Following Schulman [L. S. Schulman, Techniques and Applications of Path Integration (Wiley, New York, 1981)], such paths are divided into their homotopy equivalence classes, and the contributions from each class of paths of the Feynman sum are identified with propagators of a wave equation in the universal covering manifold of M, resulting in a simple form for the propagator on M. A group homomorphism from ℋ, the fundamental homotopy group of M, to the gauge group G is shown to characterize possible Aharonov–Bohm effects, which can be divided into two types, Abelian and non-Abelian, according to whether ℋ*, the image of this homomorphism, is Abelian or non-Abelian. For a non-Abelian Aharonov–Bohm effect, it is necessary that both ℋ and G be non-Abelian. Simple examples illustrate the theory.
We develop a unified treatment of the non-Abelian Aharonov-Bohm (AB) effect in isotropic multiband systems, namely, the scattering of particles on a gauge field corresponding to a noncommutative Lie group. We present a complex contour integral representation of the scattering states for such systems, and using their asymptotic form, we calculate the differential scattering cross section. The angular dependence of the cross section turns out to be the same as that obtained originally by Aharonov and Bohm in their seminal paper [Phys. Rev. 115, 485 (1959)], but this time, it depends on the polarization of the incoming plane wave. As an application of our theory, we perform the contour integrals for the wave functions explicitly and calculate the corresponding cross section for three nontrivial isotropic multiband systems relevant to condensed matter and particle physics. To have a deeper insight into the nature of the scattering, we plot the probability and current distributions for different incoming waves. This paper is a generalization of our recent results on the Abelian AB effect providing an extension of exactly solvable AB scattering problems.