Everything about The Aharonov-bohm Effect totally explained
The
Aharonov-Bohm effect, sometimes called the
Ehrenberg-Siday-Aharonov-Bohm effect, is a
quantum mechanical phenomenon by which a charged particle is affected by electromagnetic fields in regions from which the particle is excluded. The earliest form of this effect was predicted by
Werner Ehrenberg and
R.E. Siday in
1949, and similar effects were later rediscovered by
Aharonov and
Bohm in
1959. Such effects are predicted to arise from both
magnetic fields and
electric fields, but the magnetic version has been easier to observe. In general, the profound consequence of Aharonov-Bohm effects is that knowledge of the classical electromagnetic field acting
locally on a particle isn't sufficient to predict its quantum-mechanical behavior.
After the 1959 paper was published, Bohm was informed that the effect had been predicted by
R.E. Siday and Werner Ehrenberg a decade earlier; Bohm and Aharonov duly cited this in their second paper (Peat, 1997, p. 192).
The most commonly described case, sometimes called the
Aharonov-Bohm solenoid effect, is when the wave function of a charged particle passing around a long
solenoid experiences a
phase shift as a result of the enclosed magnetic field, despite the magnetic field being zero in the region through which the particle passes. This phase shift has been observed experimentally by its effect on interference fringes. (There are also magnetic Aharonov-Bohm effects on bound energies and scattering cross sections, but these cases have not been experimentally tested.) An electric Aharonov-Bohm phenomenon was also predicted, in which a charged particle is affected by regions with different
electrical potentials but zero electric field, and this has also seen experimental confirmation. A separate "molecular" Aharonov-Bohm effect was proposed for nuclear motion in multiply-connected regions, but this has been argued to be essentially different, depending only on local quantities along the nuclear path (Sjöqvist, 2002).
A general review can be found in Peshkin and Tonomura (1989).
Magnetic Aharonov-Bohm effect
The magnetic Aharonov-Bohm effect can be seen as a result of the requirement that quantum physics be invariant with respect to the
gauge choice for the vector potential
A. This implies that a particle with electric charge
q travelling along some path P in a region with zero magnetic field (
, which results in a shift in the interference pattern.
See also a related effect, the
Berry phase.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Aharonov-bohm Effect'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://aharonov-bohm_effect.totallyexplained.com">Aharonov-Bohm effect Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
