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Aharonov-Bohm effect: influence of the electron's field, and speculations on the possibility of shielding

Michael A. Peshkin

Published Jan 1, 1983• 1 citation
OpenAlex

Abstract

Aharonov-Bohm (AB) effect is discussed from a viewpoint which stresses the influence of the fields whose source is the scattered particle. Speculations are presented to suggest that AB scattering may be influenced by subtle properties of superconducting surfaces which may shield the particle's fields away from the external magnetic field. Experiments are required to test the reality of such speculations. If such shielding effects can be measured, AB effect may become a sensitive probe to search for unusual surface states which display off diagonal long range order.

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Aharonov-Bohm (AB) effect is discussed from a viewpoint which stresses the influence of the fields whose source is the scattered particle. Speculations are presented to suggest that AB scattering may be influenced by subtle properties of superconducting surfaces which may shield the particle's fields away from the external magnetic field. Experiments are required to test the reality of such speculations. If such shielding effects can be measured, AB effect may become a sensitive probe to search for unusual surface states which display off diagonal long range order.
The Aharonov-Bohm (AB) effect was tested under conditions where an electron wave and a magnetic field did not overlap: the Meissner effect of the superconductor shielding a toroidal ferromagnet eliminated the leakage field. Using the newly-developed technique of electron holography, conclusive evidence for the AB effect was obtained by detecting a relative phase shift of π between the two electron waves passing through the hole and outside the toroid. The detected phase shift value of exactly π comes from the quantization of the magnetic flux within the superconductor. This quantization assures the complete shielding of the magnetic field.
We study the Aharonov–Bohm (AB) effect through resonances for magnetic scattering in two dimensions. The scattering system consists of three scatterers, one bounded obstacle, and two scalar potentials with compact supports at large separation, where the obstacle is placed between two supports and the support of the magnetic field is completely shielded by the obstacle. The field does not influence particles from a classical mechanical point of view, but quantum particles are influenced by the corresponding vector potential which does not necessarily vanish outside the obstacle. This quantum phenomenon is called the AB effect. The resonances are shown to be generated near the real axis by the trajectories oscillating between two supports of the scalar potentials as the distances between the three scatterers go to infinity. The location is described in terms of the backward amplitudes for scattering by each of the scalar potentials and by the obstacle, and it depends heavily on the magnetic flux of the field.
Evidence for the Aharonov-Bohm effect was obtained with magnetic fields shielded from the electron wave. A toroidal ferromagnet was covered with a superconductor layer to confine the field, and further with a copper layer for complete shielding from the electron wave. The expected relative phase shift was detected with electron holography between two electron beams, one passing through the hole of the toroid, and the other passing outside. The experiment gave direct evidence for flux quantization also.
An experiment to observe the Aharonov-Bohm effect is discussed. A solenoid which consists of a large number of point magnetic dipoles is considered as the source of a vector potential, which acts on a charged particle, and such potential has an electromagnetic field of zero strength in the region of a nonzero vector potential. A detailed microscopic analysis of the change in the quantum state phase of the entire system, namely, a particle and a set of dipoles, reveals the origin of the apparent nonlocality of the action of the vector potential, and shows the locality of the phase change mechanism. An analysis of an experiment with a solenoid shielded by a superconducting shell is given.
We address the question of locality versus nonlocality in the Aharonov-Bohm and the Aharonov-Casher effects. For this purpose, we investigate all possible configurations of ideal shielding of the overlap between the electromagnetic fields generated by a charge and by a magnetic flux and analyze their consequences on the Aharonov-Bohm-Casher interference. In a classical treatment of shielding, the Aharonov-Bohm-Casher effect vanishes regardless of the geometry of shielding when the local overlap of electromagnetic fields is completely eliminated. On the other hand, the result depends on the configuration of shielding if the charge quantization in the superconducting shield is taken into account. It is shown that our results are fully understood in terms of the fluctuating local-field interaction. Our analysis strongly supports the alternative view on the Aharonov-Bohm-Casher interference that the effects originate from the local action of electromagnetic fields.