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Journal of Physics A Mathematical and General

Practical calculations of the Aharonov-Bohm effect

G N Afanasiev, V.M. Shilov

Published Dec 21, 1989• 9 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The authors have found the scattering cross sections on two solenoids with opposite magnetic fluxes and on the toroidal solenoid in the presence or absence of a magnetic field. From this they extract the diffraction pattern shift which is due to the presence of the magnetic flux inside the solenoids. Practical recommendations for the performance of the experiments are given. It is proved that the crucial experiment on the existence of the AB effect suggested earlier could indeed be realised in practice.

DOI
10.1088/0305-4470/22/24/010

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The authors have found the scattering cross sections on two solenoids with opposite magnetic fluxes and on the toroidal solenoid in the presence or absence of a magnetic field. From this they extract the diffraction pattern shift which is due to the presence of the magnetic flux inside the solenoids. Practical recommendations for the performance of the experiments are given. It is proved that the crucial experiment on the existence of the AB effect suggested earlier could indeed be realised in practice.
The quantum-mechanical Aharonov-Bohm effect in the diffraction of charged particles by a toroidal solenoid containing a magnetic field is investigated. The total and differential elastic scattering cross sections depend on the magnetic flux inside the solenoid, even in the presence of a “black” ring-shaped screen which prevents charged particles from entering the region where the magnetic field is localized. Relations describing the momentum-transfer cross section for the elastic scattering of charged particles by a toroidal solenoid are obtained in the eikonal approximation and in a unitary model of scattering with a sharp jump in the partial amplitudes. The momentum-transfer scattering cross section is proportional to the average transfer of the longitudinal momentum of the scattered particle and can be expressed in terms of a force operator. It is shown that in the absence of a screen the momentum-transfer scattering cross section of toroidal solenoid is indeed determined only by the part of the incident beam that intersects the inner region of the toroidal solenoid, where the magnetic field intensity and, therefore, the Lorentz force are nonzero. At the same time, the momentum-transfer cross section for the scattering of charged particles by a toroidal solenoid covered by a “black” ring-shaped screen does not depend on the magnetic flux inside the solenoid and is identical to the momentum-transfer cross section for diffraction by the same screen. The contribution from scattering by an opening in the screen, which depends on the magnetic flux, is completely compensated by the contribution of the interference of the scattering amplitudes of the opening and the “black” screen.
The charged particle scattering amplitude on the magnetic field of a toroidal solenoid is obtained in the first Born and high-energy approximations. It is shown that multiconnectedness of the accessible space, non-triviality vector potentials in it and the single-valuedness of the wavefunctions used are not enough for the existence of the Aharonov-Bohm effect. Criteria are given for this. Surrounding the toroidal solenoid with barriers of different geometrical forms, the author observes that the magnetic field contribution to the scattering amplitude depends crucially both on the barrier height and its form. The latter could hardly be explained by particle penetration into the H not=0 region. The author proposes an addendum to Tonomura's experiments which probably could clear up any doubts about the existence of the AB effect. The gedanken experiment is discussed which shows that the effect of inaccessible fields could be observed even in a simply connected space.
In the Aharonov–Bohm (AB) effect, electrons form an interference pattern whose bright and dark fringes shift position when the magnetic flux confined within a nearby solenoid is changed, even though the electrons travel only through regions where the magnetic field is zero. Operationally, the experiment compares electron interference patterns obtained under different solenoid current (or enclosed flux) conditions, revealing a measurable phase difference—observed as fringe displacement—between the two electron paths despite the absence of any force acting on the electrons along those paths. Each electron arrives as a dot, but many dots build up the interference pattern. The effect tracks the enclosed flux (current level), with on/off as an illustrative extreme. What is measured is phase difference / fringe displacement, i.e., a relative effect between the two paths. This Aharonov-Bohm effect is famous in modern physics and widely regarded as proof that electromagnetic potentials possess physical reality even in regions where fields vanish. This paper reinterprets the AB effect by reframing it using the SP3 (space-phase) theory.
The Aharonov--Bohm effect in a model system described by the generalized Schrödinger equation is considered. The scattering cross section is calculated in the standard formulation: an electron beam impinges on a long impenetrable solenoid encompassing a magnetic field. It is shown that the incident wave is scattered regardless of whether the magnetic flux through the solenoid is an integer of flux quanta whereby the scattering cross section becomes a continuously nonzero function of the total magnetic flux. The problem may find its application in investigations of the soliton-magnon interaction in the low-dimensional magnetism.