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arXiv:quant-ph/0112136 · Physical Review Letters

Locality and Topology in the Molecular Aharonov-Bohm Effect

Erik Sjöqvist

Published Oct 31, 2002• 27 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

It is shown that the molecular Aharonov-Bohm effect is neither nonlocal nor topological in the sense of the standard magnetic Aharonov-Bohm effect. It is further argued that there is a close relationship between the molecular Aharonov-Bohm effect and the Aharonov-Casher effect for an electrically neutral spin -1 / 2 particle encircling a line of charge.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.89.210401

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It is shown that the molecular Aharonov-Bohm effect is neither nonlocal nor topological in the sense of the standard magnetic Aharonov-Bohm effect. It is further argued that there is a close relationship between the molecular Aharonov-Bohm effect and the Aharonov-Casher effect for an electrically neutral spin -1 / 2 particle encircling a line of charge.
The nonlocal and topological nature of the molecular Aharonov-Bohm (MAB) effect is examined for real electronic Hamiltonians. A notion of preferred gauge for MAB is suggested. The MAB effect in the linear + quadratic EotimesepsilonE\\otimes \\epsilonEotimesepsilon Jahn-Teller system is shown to be essentially analogues to an anisotropic Aharonov-Casher effect for an electrically neutral spin−1/2-{1/2}−1/2 particle encircling a certain configuration of lines of charge.
Abstract The Aharonov–Bohm (AB) effect has been highly influential in fundamental and applied physics. Its topological nature commonly implies that an electron encircling a magnetic flux source in a field-free region must close the loop in order to generate an observable effect. In this paper, we study a variant of the AB effect that apparently challenges this concept. The significance of weak values and nonlocal equations of motion is discussed as part of the analysis, shedding light on and connecting all these fundamental concepts.
Recent neutron interferometry experiments have been interpreted as demonstrating a new topological phenomenon similar in principle to the usual Aharonov-Bohm (AB) effect, but with the neutron's magnetic moment replacing the electron's charge. We show that he new phenomenon, called scalar AB (SAB) effect, follows from an ordinary local interaction, contrary to the usual AB effect, and we argue that the SAB effect is not a topological effect by any useful definition. We find that SAB actually measures an apparently novel spin autocorrelation whose operator equations of motion contain the local torque in the magnetic field. We note that the same remarks apply to the Aharonov-Casher effect.