Revisiting the Marton, Simpson, and Suddeth experimental confirmation of the Aharonov-Bohm effect

TL;DR

This paper critically reexamines a 1954 experiment thought to confirm the static Aharonov-Bohm effect, revealing issues with previous analysis and aligning results with recent theories predicting phase shift cancellations in time-dependent scenarios.

Contribution

It clarifies the interpretation of the 1954 experiment by including electric fields and aligns findings with recent theoretical predictions, calling for new experiments.

Findings

The original experiment's analysis ignored electric fields from time-varying magnetic flux.

Results conform to recent predictions of phase shift cancellation in time-dependent Aharonov-Bohm effect.

A new experiment is needed to conclusively test the time-dependent Aharonov-Bohm effect.

Abstract

We perform an "archeological" study of one of the original experiments used as evidence for the static, time-independent Aharonov-Bohm effect. Since the experiment in question [L. Marton, J. A. Simpson, and J. A. Suddeth, Rev. Sci. Instr. 25, 1099 (1954)] involved a time varying magnetic field we show that there are problems with the explanation of this experiment as a confirmation of the static Aharonov-Bohm effect -- specifically the previous analysis ignored the electric field which arises in conjunction with a time-varying magnetic flux. We further argue that the results of this experiment do in fact conform exactly to the recent prediction [D. Singleton and E. Vagenas, Phys. Lett. B723, 241 (2013); J. MacDougall and D. Singleton, J. Math. Phys. 55, 042101 (2014)] of a cancellation between the magnetic and electric phase shifts for the time-dependent Aharonov-Bohm effect. To resolve this issue a new time-dependent Aharonov-Bohm experiment is called for.