Idealizations, essential self-adjointness, and minimal model explanation in the Aharonov–Bohm effect

John Earman

R. Blanco

Pavel Exner, Pavel Šťovíček, P. Vytřas

The most general admissible boundary conditions are derived for an idealized Aharonov–Bohm flux intersecting the plane at the origin on the background of a homogeneous magnetic field. A standard technique based on self-adjoint extensions yields a four-parameter family of boundary conditions; the other two parameters of the model are the Aharonov–Bohm flux and the homogeneous magnetic field. The generalized boundary conditions may be regarded as a combination of the Aharonov–Bohm effect with a point interaction. Spectral properties of the derived Hamtonians are studied in detail.

César R. de Oliveira, Renan G. Romano

We add a scalar potential to the 2D Aharonov-Bohm (AB) model which properly diverges both at the solenoid border and at infinity so that the resulting operator is essentially self-adjoint and has a discrete spectrum; the former property is interpreted as no contact of the particle with the solenoid border since there is no need of boundary conditions. We study gauge transformations to get the usual periodic behavior of the AB properties as a function of the magnetic flux. The presence of the AB effect is proven through the ground state energy, which is shown to be smooth in case it is simple and with a nonzero derivative if the ground state is real valued; such properties are verified in the case of circular solenoids, for which it is shown to be a nonconstant periodic function with a minimum at integer and a maximum at half-integer circulations (at half-integer circulations, it is doubly degenerated).

Vladimir D. Skarzhinsky

H. O Girotti, F. Fonseca Romero

The formulation of Berry for the Aharonov-Bohm effect is generalized to the relativistic regime. Then, the problem of finding the self-adjoint extensions of the (2+1)-dimensional Dirac Hamiltonian, in an Aharonov-Bohm background potential, is solved in a novel way. The same treatment also solves the problem of finding the self-adjoint extensions of the Dirac Hamiltonian in an Aharonov-Casher background.