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Physical Review Letters

Aharonov-Bohm scattering of particles with spin

C. R. Hägen

Published Jan 29, 1990• 246 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The scattering of relativistic spin-one-half particles in an Aharonov-Bohm potential is considered. It is shown that earlier approaches to this problem have neglected a crucial delta function contribution to the potential. By formulating the problem with a source of finite radius which is then allowed to go to zero, it is established that this is the delta function alone that causes solutions that are singular at the origin to become relevant. The changes in the amplitude which arise from the inclusion of spin are seen to modify the cross section for the case of polarized beams. Finally, the calculated Aharonov-Bohm amplitude is shown to describe the scattering of particles with arbitrary spin in the c=\ensuremath{\infty} limit.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.64.503

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Physical Review Letters•May 14, 1990•142 citations
The scattering of relativistic spin-one-half particles in an Aharonov-Bohm potential is considered. It is shown that earlier approaches to this problem have neglected a crucial delta function contribution to the potential. By formulating the problem with a source of finite radius which is then allowed to go to zero, it is established that this is the delta function alone that causes solutions that are singular at the origin to become relevant. The changes in the amplitude which arise from the inclusion of spin are seen to modify the cross section for the case of polarized beams. Finally, the calculated Aharonov-Bohm amplitude is shown to describe the scattering of particles with arbitrary spin in the c=\ensuremath{\infty} limit.
The problem of the proper inclusion of spin in Aharonov—Bohm scattering is considered. It is proposed that this should be accomplished by imposing the requirement that all singularities arising from the presence of spin in the associated wave equations be interpreted as limits of physically realizable flux distributions. This leads to results which confirm the usual cross section in the spinless case but imply nontrivial modifications for the scattering of a polarized spin one-half beam. By applying the technique to a calculation of the virial coefficient for a collection of flux carrying spin one-half particles, some severe obstacles to conventional views of the flux as a parameter which interpolates between bosonic and fermionic statistics are shown to occur. Although similar results for the scattering of arbitrary spin particles obtain in the Galilean limit, it is found that when spin one is considered in the context of a relativistic wave equation the singularity structure is too pathological to yield a consistent interpretation. The exact equivalence of the spin one-half Aharonov-Bohm effect to the Aharonov-Casher effect is also demonstrated and corresponding results for polarized beams are presented. Finally, it is shown that the Aharonov-Bohm effect for arbitrary spin in the Galilean limit is the exact solution in the two-particle sector of a Galilean covariant field theory.
The Aharonov-Bohm scattering of massive spin-one particles is computed. Starting from the relativistic wave equation for a charged, massive spin-one particle, a reduction to two spatial dimensions is made, consistent with the standard Aharonov-Bohm (AB) geometry. It is found that the problem consists of the independent scattering of the three vector-meson spins. While the amplitude for the spin-0 mode is trivially identical to the AB amplitude, the same result is obtained for the spin-up and spin-down components, in sharp contrast to the corresponding result for the spin-1/2 AB amplitude. This can be traced to the fact that the Hamiltonian is unbounded as a consequence of the presence of a \ensuremath{\delta}-function term in the potential. In the Galilean limit it is found that the amplitude of the nonzero-spin components is identical to the spin-1/2 amplitude in that limit, in agreement with a general claim made earlier by one of the authors. The Galilean limit of the spin-one AB cross section is found to be modified and calculations for some pure-state polarizations are presented.
The Born scattering amplitude of a non-relativistic spin one-half particle in an Aharonov-Bohm potential is calculated up to second order. It is demonstrated that perturbation theory works well for this model, in contrast with the case of scalar particles, thanks to the spin-magnetic moment interaction term. The first order amplitude is shown to coincide with the exact amplitude when expanded to the same order; the second order amplitude is finite and null. The polarized scattering cross section is found to be different from the unpolarized one only if the incident particle has a spin component perpendicular to the flux tube.
The scattering of relativistic spin-1/2 neutral particles with a magnetic dipole moment by a long straight charged line and a magnetic flux line at the same position is studied. The scattering cross sections for unpolarized and polarized particles are obtained by solving the Dirac-Pauli equation. The results are in general the same as those for pure Aharonov-Casher scattering (by the charged line alone) as expected. However, in special cases when the incident energy, the line charge density, and the magnetic flux satisfy some relations, the cross section for polarized particles is dramatically changed. Relations between the polarization of incident particles and that of scattered ones are presented, both in the full relativistic case and the nonrelativistic limit. The characteristic difference between the general and special cases lies in the backward direction: in the general cases the incident particles are simply bounced while in the special cases their polarization is turned over simultaneously. For pure Aharonov-Casher scattering there exist cases where the helicities of all scattered particles are reversed. This seems to be remarkable but appears unnoticed previously. Two mathematical approaches are employed to deal with the singularity of the electric and magnetic field and it turns out that the physical results are essentially the same.
It is shown that there is an exact equivalence between the Aharonov-Bohm effect for spin-1/2 particles and the Aharonov-Casher effect. The demonstration of this precise relationship between the two is seen furthermore to be independent of whether relativistic or nonrelativistic kinematics are used. The only remaining substantive distinction between the two effects may well be the fact that the scattering cross section for polarized beams has a considerably greater sturcture in the Aharonov-Casher case despite the mathematical equivalence of the scattering amplitudes for the two effects.