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Anholonomic deformations in the ether: a significance for the electrodynamic potentials: P. R. Holland and C. Philippidis Basil J. Hiley, F. David Peat
Published Jun 25, 2012 • 0 citations
Abstract It is now generally accepted that the Aharonov-Bohm (AB) effect 1 demonstrates that in quantum mechanics the electromagnetic potentials All playa much more significant role than the one they occupy in classical physics. Wu and Yang 2 have emphasized this by pointing out that while the field strengths Fill' underdescribe electrodynamic processes (quantum mechanical), the phase factors exp (ieSAlldxll ) give a more complete description.
DOI 10.4324/9780203392799-22 Related papers Aptly named Aharonov-Bohm effect has classical analogue, long history
Murray Peshkin
Physics Today • Aug 1, 2010• 1 citation
Electromagnetic potentials and Aharonov-Bohm effect
A. I. Ershkovich
arXiv:1209.1078 • Sep 4, 2012• 2 citations
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Gao, Shan
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More variations on Aharonov-Bohm
Herman Batelaan, Akira Tonomura
Physics Today • Apr 1, 2010• 1 citation
It is now generally accepted that the Aharonov-Bohm (AB) effect 1 demonstrates that in quantum mechanics the electromagnetic potentials All playa much more significant role than the one they occupy in classical physics. Wu and Yang 2 have emphasized this by pointing out that while the field strengths Fill' underdescribe electrodynamic processes (quantum mechanical), the phase factors exp (ieSAlldxll ) give a more complete description.
I am an author of the 1961 paper that first called the Aharonov-Bohm effect by that name. 1 1. M. Peshkin, I. Talmi, L. J. Tassie, Ann. Phys. 12, 426 (1961). The term has since appeared in more than 1000 published papers. However, it has been suggested a few times, most recently by Peter Sturrock and Timothy Groves, that the name does not do justice to Werner Ehrenberg and Raymond Siday, who found in 1949 that the motion of electrons can be influenced by magnetic fields confined to regions that the electrons do not enter. 2 2. W. Ehrenberg, R. E. Siday, Proc. Phys. Soc. B 62, 8 (1949). I argue that the name Aharonov-Bohm effect is appropriate, although for a reason that I did not fully appreciate in 1961.The 1959 Aharonov-Bohm paper profoundly changed the way we think about electromagnetic fields in quantum mechanics. 3 3. Y. Aharonov, D. Bohm, Phys. Rev. 115, 485 (1959). The gauge-invariant part of the vector potential was promoted to a real physical field, not just a convenient device for summarizing certain information about the electric and magnetic fields. In the words of C. N. Yang, “The electromagnetic field strength fµv in quantum mechanics underdescribes electromagnetism, as the Bohm-Aharonov effect demonstrates … information about the phase factor exp[ie∮(A⋅dx)/ℏc] for all closed loops correctly describes electromagnetism.” 4 4. C. N. Yang, in Proceedings of the International Symposium on Foundations of Quantum Mechanics in the Light of New Technology, Tokyo, 1983, S. Kamefuchi et al. , eds., Physical Society of Japan, Tokyo (1984), p. 5.See also T. T. Wu, C. N. Yang, Phys. Rev. D 12, 3845 (1975). A century earlier, James Clerk Maxwell changed the way we think about action at a distance by identifying what we now call the Maxwell fields as real physical things that contain energy and momentum and that enable microscopic conservation laws; they are not just mathematical functions that summarize the necessary information about the past motions of charges. Later those physical fields had to be quantized. Yakir Aharonov and David Bohm found that in quantum mechanics the Maxwell fields in a multiply connected region do not contain all the physics; the vector potential must also be endowed with reality to make sense of the subtler interactions in quantum mechanics. Neither Aharonov and Bohm nor Ehrenberg and Siday were the first to observe that magnetic fields in places where a charged particle’s wave function vanishes may influence the motion of that particle. 5 5. P. A. M. Dirac, Proc. R. Soc. London A 133, 60 (1931) F. London, Nature 140, 793 (1937). Paul Dirac, in his 1931 paper on magnetic monopoles, noted that the electron’s wavefunction must vanish on singular flux lines but said nothing about that raising any question of nonlocality. Fritz London pointed out in the 1930s that the motion of electrons in a superconducting ring depends on an external magnetic flux through the hole in the ring, where the electrons cannot go. He wrote in his 1937 paper, “The most stable state of a ring has no current, unless an external magnetic field is applied.” Like Dirac, he said nothing about a nonlocal action of the magnetic field being surprising or unusual. Of course, London, like Dirac, was focusing on something else.Ehrenberg and Siday were also focusing on something else—electron optics—when they found in 1949 that the motion of an electron can depend on the magnetic field in a region from which the electron is excluded. They chose not to mention that curious phenomenon in the abstract of their paper, although they did explicitly say elsewhere that it was “curious.”None of those earlier authors went on to conclude that such a phenomenon implies that the vector potential has to be seen as a real physical field in quantum mechanics. Only Aharonov and Bohm did that.REFERENCESSection:ChooseTop of pageREFERENCES <<1. M. Peshkin, I. Talmi, L. J. Tassie, Ann. Phys. 12, 426 (1961). Google ScholarCrossref, ISI2. W. Ehrenberg, R. E. Siday, Proc. Phys. Soc. B 62, 8 (1949). Google ScholarCrossref3. Y. Aharonov, D. Bohm, Phys. Rev. 115, 485 (1959). Google ScholarCrossref, ISI4. C. N. Yang, in Proceedings of the International Symposium on Foundations of Quantum Mechanics in the Light of New Technology, Tokyo, 1983, S. Kamefuchi et al. , eds., Physical Society of Japan, Tokyo (1984), p. 5. Google ScholarSee also T. T. Wu, C. N. Yang, Phys. Rev. D 12, 3845 (1975). Google ScholarCrossref, ISI5. P. A. M. Dirac, Proc. R. Soc. London A 133, 60 (1931) Google ScholarCrossref F. London, Nature 140, 793 (1937). , Google ScholarCrossref© 2010 American Institute of Physics.
Hamilton-Jacobi equation which governs classical mechanics and electrodynamics explicitly depends on the electromagnetic potentials (A,ϕ), similar to Schroedinger equation. We derived the Aharonov-Bohm effect from Hamilton-Jacobi equation thereby having proved that this effect is of classical origin. These facts enable us to arrive at the following conclusions: a) the very idea of special role of potentials (A,ϕ) in quantum mechanics (different from their role in classical physics) lost the ground, and becomes dubious, as this idea is based on the Aharonov-Bohm effect, b) failure to find any signs of a special role of these potentials in the appropriate experiments (Feinberg, 1963) is thereby explained, and c) discovery of classical analogues of the Aharonov-Bohm effect (Berry et al., 1980) is also explained by a classical nature of this effect. Elucidation of the "unlocal" interaction problem was made.
The Aharonov-Bohm (AB) effect, wherein an electron acquires a phase shift in a field-free region due to electromagnetic potentials, poses a profound challenge to the ontology of quantum mechanics and gauge theories. This paper demonstrates that gauge-invariant explanations, which attribute the phase to measurable quantities, rely on nonlocal and discontinuous mechanism and fail to account for its continuous accumulation along the electron's path—a process evident in the generalized AB effect, where a time-varying magnetic flux induces a phase that builds gradually over time, as predicted by quantum mechanics. Through a new analysis spanning quantum mechanics and quantum electrodynamics, I argue that the electromagnetic potentials
A μ A_\mu A μ , fixed in the Lorenz gauge, emerge as the fundamental physical reality, offering a local, relativistically consistent account of the phase’s generation. This exclusion of gauge-invariant paradigms reverberates across gauge theories: it redefines the Higgs mechanism, favoring dynamic potentials over static invariants, and extends to general relativity, where gravitational potentials
g μ ν g_{\mu\nu} g μν may anchor spacetime’s substantival reality via a gravitational AB effect. By unraveling the AB phase’s continuous generation—locally mediated by potentials—this study not only addresses a long-standing conundrum but also bridges electromagnetic, gravitational, and Yang-Mills frameworks, offering a unified potential-centric perspective with novel implications for physics and philosophy.
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.
In this article, we start our discussion on the Aharonov-Bohm effect then raise a plausible interpretation within the quantum electrodynamics (QED) framework. We provide a quantum treatment of the source of the electromagnetic potential and argue that the underlying mechanism in AB effect can be viewed as interactions between electrons described by QED theory where the interactions are mediated by virtue photons. On further analysis, we claim that the framework of one particle quantum mechanics (OPQM) can be shown, in general, as a mathematically approximated model which can be reformulated from QED theory. In addition, the classical Maxwell equations are derived from QED scattering process while both classical electromagnetic fields and potentials serve as mathematical tools that are constructed to approximate the interactions among elementary particles described by QED physics, i.e. neither classical fields nor potentials represent any real entities of nature. At the conclusion of this article, we make a few remarks on the hypnosis of the existence of magnetic monopoles.
Batelaan and Tonomura reply: Werner Ehrenberg and Raymond Siday did propose the magnetic version of what is now called the Aharonov-Bohm (AB) effect, 1 1. A. Tonomura, Electron Holography, 2nd ed., Springer, New York (1999), p. 63. as Peter Sturrock and Timothy Groves point out. We had included this reference in the early versions of our manuscript. However, limited space directed the focus of the paper to the “effect without a force” discussion, rather than a historic perspective.Alexander Ershkovich notes that in the Hamilton-Jacobi formulation of classical mechanics, both the action and the Hamiltonian depend on the vector potential; he ponders whether the AB effect might have a classical manifestation. Newton’s formulation of classical mechanics is equivalent to the Hamilton-Jacobi formulation. Because the absence of a field means the absence of a force in Newton’s formulation, classical trajectories are unaffected. That result is not expected to change in the equivalent Hamilton-Jacobi formulation. Thus the AB effect is usually considered to be a pure quantum effect. On the other hand, we may interpret “classical mechanics” in a broader sense, such as in general relativistic classical mechanics. In electrodynamics classical trajectories are not affected by a localized magnetic field through which they do not pass. However, considering that the energy content of a current-carrying solenoid is larger than that of one without current, the trajectory is clearly affected gravitationally, at least in principle. Though not due to the AB effect, that result elucidates that a generalized description may lead to other insights. The Hamilton-Jacobi equation may be an example of a theoretical vehicle by which to explore generalizations such as relativistic effects, separation of variables, multiple particle effects, or the classical limit of the de Broglie-Bohm theory. C. Alden Mead recollects interesting statements made by Bohm. We agree fully with Bohm’s statement that “it would be much more revolutionary for this effect to be wrong than for it to be right.” Attempts to disprove the AB effect should be seen for what they are, outright attempts at finding limits to the validity of quantum mechanics itself. And although quantum mechanics is unfinished with respect to, say, de-coherence theory and quantum gravity, the AB effect appears to be well within its validity range.We do not share Bohm’s astonishment that, as Mead relates, “certain physicists refused to accept the AB effect and even went to great lengths to try to disprove it.” Rather, to risk overusing a platitude, extraordinary phenomena should be exposed to extraordinary scrutiny. Failed attempts to disprove an idea often provide insight into its fundamental character. In that context, we reiterate the main message of our article. Many facets of the AB effect—for example, the electric version, the dispersionless nature, relativistic momentum conservation, the relation to the Mott-Schwinger effect, and the AB effects for other than electromagnetic gauge-invariant theories—need exploration. We predict a bright future for the AB effect, with many surprises to come.REFERENCESection:ChooseTop of pageREFERENCE <<1. A. Tonomura, Electron Holography, 2nd ed., Springer, New York (1999), p. 63. Google ScholarCrossref© 2010 American Institute of Physics.