A variant of the experiment to observe the optical Aharonov—Bohm effect has been discussed. In the experiment, a unipolar subcycle light pulse has been proposed as a source of the vector potential acting on electrons and having zero electric field strength in the region of a nonzero vector potential. Such a relation between the field and potential appears because the unipolar pulse has a nonzero electric area. An unusual situation where the fact of the passage of the pulse in one of the arms of two-beam interferometer is stored for a very long time after the passage and can be recorded in a two-beam electronic interferometer by a shift of fringes has been discussed. Detailed analysis of the phase shift under the influence of the vector potential created by the inhomogeneous unipolar pulse removes this contradiction and shows the equality of phase incursions in both arms that is unobvious at first glance.
A variant of the experiment to observe the optical Aharonov—Bohm effect has been discussed. In the experiment, a unipolar subcycle light pulse has been proposed as a source of the vector potential acting on electrons and having zero electric field strength in the region of a nonzero vector potential. Such a relation between the field and potential appears because the unipolar pulse has a nonzero electric area. An unusual situation where the fact of the passage of the pulse in one of the arms of two-beam interferometer is stored for a very long time after the passage and can be recorded in a two-beam electronic interferometer by a shift of fringes has been discussed. Detailed analysis of the phase shift under the influence of the vector potential created by the inhomogeneous unipolar pulse removes this contradiction and shows the equality of phase incursions in both arms that is unobvious at first glance.
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.
The AB (Aharonov-Bohm) effect is a pivotal quantum mechanical phenomenon that illustrates the fundamental role of the electromagnetic vector potential A in determining the phase of a charged particle's wave function, even in regions where the magnetic field B is zero.This effect demonstrates that quantum particles are influenced not only by the fields directly present but also by the potentials associated with those fields.In the AB effect, an electron beam is split into two paths, with one path encircling a solenoid and the other bypassing it.Despite the absence of a magnetic field in the regions traversed by the beams, the vector potential A associated with the magnetic flux through the solenoid induces a phase shift in the electron's wave function.This phase shift, quantified by qc , manifests as a change in the interference pattern observed in the detection screen.The phenomenon underscores the principle of gauge invariance in QED (quantum electrodynamics), where physical observables remain invariant under local gauge transformations of the vector and scalar potentials.This reinforces the notion that the vector potential A has a profound impact on quantum systems, beyond its classical role.This article outlines the AB effect, including its theoretical framework, experimental observations, and implications.The focus on the role of the vector potential in quantum mechanics provides a comprehensive understanding of this important phenomenon.
The seminal paper of Aharonov and Bohm [Phys. Rev. 115, 485 (1959)]10.1103/PhysRev.115.485 is at the origin of a very extensive literature in some of the more fundamental issues in physics. They claimed that electromagnetic fields can act at a distance on charged particles even if they are identically zero in the region of space where the particles propagate, that the fundamental electromagnetic quantities in quantum physics are not only the electromagnetic fields but also the circulations of the electromagnetic potentials; what gives them a real physical significance. They proposed two experiments to verify their theoretical conclusions. The magnetic Aharonov-Bohm effect, where an electron is influenced by a magnetic field that is zero in the region of space accessible to the electron, and the electric Aharonov-Bohm effect where an electron is affected by a time-dependent electric potential that is constant in the region where the electron is propagating, i.e., such that the electric field vanishes along its trajectory. The Aharonov-Bohm effects imply such a strong departure from the physical intuition coming from classical physics that it is no wonder that they remain a highly controversial issue after more than fifty years, in spite of the fact that they are discussed in most of the text books in quantum mechanics. The magnetic case has been studied extensively. The experimental issues were settled by the remarkable experiments of Tonomura et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 48, 1443 (1982); Phys. Rev. Lett. 56, 792 (1986)] with toroidal magnets, that gave a strong evidence of the existence of the effect, and by the recent experiment of Caprez et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 210401 (2007)]10.1103/PhysRevLett.99.210401 that shows that the results of the Tonomura et al. experiments cannot be explained by the action of a force. The theoretical issues were settled by Ballesteros and Weder [Commun. Math. Phys. 285, 345 (2009)10.1007/s00220-008-0579-1; J. Math. Phys. 50, 122108 (2009)10.1063/1.3266176; Commun. Math. Phys. 303, 175 (2011)]10.1007/s00220-010-1166-9 who rigorously proved that quantum mechanics predicts the experimental results of Tonomura et al. and of Caprez et al. The electric Aharonov-Bohm effect has been much less studied. Actually, its existence, that has not been confirmed experimentally, is a very controversial issue. In their 1959 paper Aharonov and Bohm proposed an ansatz for the solution to the Schrödinger equation in regions where there is a time-dependent electric potential that is constant in space. It consists in multiplying the free evolution by a phase given by the integral in time of the potential. The validity of this ansatz predicts interference fringes between parts of a coherent electron beam that are subjected to different potentials. In this paper we prove that the exact solution to the Schrödinger equation is given by the Aharonov-Bohm ansatz up to an error bound in norm that is uniform in time and that decays as a constant divided by the velocity. Our results give, for the first time, a rigorous proof that quantum mechanics predicts the existence of the electric Aharonov-Bohm effect, under conditions that we provide. We hope that our results will stimulate the experimental research on the electric Aharonov-Bohm effect.
This article describes the Aharonov-Bohm (AB) effect of electron waves travelling in free space and its application to the observation of gauge fields (vector potentials). The AB effect is inconceivable in classical physics since an observable effect is produced on electrons passing through field-free spaces. Electrons can be affected only by Lorentz forces due to electromagnetic fields. The situation is different in quantum mechanics, where electrons show wave properties: the concept of force is no longer relevant, so electric field E and magnetic field B, defined as forces acting on a unit charge, take on secondary meanings. “Phase shifts” come into play, and the primary physical entities become neither E nor B but electrostatic potential V and vector potential A. These potentials interact with electron waves and shift their phases.
In the well-known Aharonov-Bohm and Ehrenberg-Siday effects, the diffraction envelope of an electron is not affected by Lorentz forces in a region of zero magnetic field; instead, a phase difference—created by the magnetic vector potential—shifts the constructive- and destructive-interference fringe positions when electron wavefunctions are overlapped. This shift in fringe positions has been previously derived as resulting from potential-induced phase differences, without being clear on the physical mechanism behind it. In this paper, we show that the de Broglie wavelength of the electron is changed locally by its interaction with the vector potential. The vector potential thus acts as a quantum “phase plate,” changing the phase difference between interfering electron wavefunctions in a non-dispersive, gauge-invariant manner.
A complementary electric Aharonov-Bohm (AB) effect is proposed and investigated where one branch of a chopped and split electron beam traverses a region with an electric field and upon interference with the other branch no phase shift would be observed. The analysis of the proposed experiment is carried out (1) in a semiclassical (SC) eikonal approximation and (2) in a complete quantum-mechanical (QM) calculation with a plane-wave approximation similar to AB's original paper. The QM phase shift is the sum of the SC phase shift plus an AB-like phase shift for a constant potential. While the SC analysis predicts that there must be a phase shift, the full QM indicates that a null phase shift is possible.