Bohm - The Physics of the Infinite

G. Introzzi, Marco Rossetti

Marij van Strien

Abstract Bohm’s interpretation of quantum mechanics has generally been received as an attempt to restore the determinism of classical physics. However, although this interpretation, as Bohm initially proposed it in 1952, does indeed have the feature of being deterministic, for Bohm this was never the main point. In fact, in other publications and in correspondence from this period, he argued that the assumption that nature is deterministic is unjustified and should be abandoned. Whereas it has been argued before that Bohm’s commitment to determinism was connected to his interest in Marxism, I argue for the opposite: Bohm found resources in Marxist philosophy for developing a non-deterministic notion of causality, which is based on the idea of infinite complexity and an infinite number of levels of nature. From ca. 1954 onwards, Bohm’s conception of causality further weakened, as he developed the idea of a dialectical relation between causality and chance.

David Z. Albert

Jürgen Audretsch, Vladimir D. Skarzhinsky

The Aharonov-Bohm (AB) scattering of charged particles by the magnetic field of an infinitely long and infinitely thin solenoid (magnetic string) in an absorbing medium is studied. We discuss the partial-wave approach to this problem and show that the standard partial-wave method can be adjusted to this case. The effect of absorption leads to oscillations of the AB cross section. Based on this we investigate the scattering of neutral atoms with induced electric dipole moments by a charge wire of finite radius, which is placed in a uniform magnetic field. The physical realistic and practically important case that all atoms that collide with the wire are totally absorbed at its surface is studied in detail. The dominating terms of the scattering amplitude are evaluated analytically for different physical constellations. The remaining terms are written in a form suitable for a numerical computation. We show that if the magnetic field is absent, the absorbing charged wire causes oscillations of the cross section. In the presence of the magnetic field the cross section increases and the dominating Aharonov-Bohm peak appears in the forward direction, suppressing the oscillations.

R. Németh, József Cserti

We present a unified treatment of the Aharonov-Bohm (AB) effect for two-dimensional multiband electronic systems possessing isotropic band structures. We propose an integral representation of the AB scattering state of an electron scattered by an infinitely thin solenoid. Moreover, we derive the asymptotic form of the AB scattering state and obtain the differential cross section from that. We found a remarkable result, namely, that this cross section is the same for all isotropic systems and agrees with that obtained first by Aharonov and Bohm for spinless free-particle systems. To demonstrate the generality of our theory, we consider several specific multiband systems relevant to condensed matter physics.

Christopher Dewdney, George Horton