Relativistic currents on ideal Aharonov-Bohm cylinders

TL;DR

This paper develops a relativistic theory for Dirac fermions on Aharonov-Bohm cylinders, deriving exact solutions and analyzing persistent currents, highlighting a saturation effect at high angular momentum and comparing with non-relativistic limits.

Contribution

It introduces a relativistic framework for Aharonov-Bohm cylinders with exact solutions, revealing a saturation effect in circular currents at high angular momentum.

Findings

Circular currents relate to energy similarly in relativistic and non-relativistic cases.

Circular currents saturate at high angular momentum in the relativistic regime.

Persistent currents on finite cylinders have similar non-relativistic limits.

Abstract

The relativistic theory of the Dirac fermions moving on cylinders in external Aharonov-Bohm field is built starting with a suitably restricted Dirac equation whose spin degrees of freedom are not affected. The exact solutions of this equation on finite or infinite Aharonov-Bohm cylinders allow one to derive the relativistic circular and longitudinal currents pointing out their principal features. It is shown that all the circular currents are related to the energy in the same manner on cylinders or rings either in the relativistic approach or in the non-relativistic one. The specific relativistic effect is the saturation of the circular currents for high values of the total angular momentum. Based on this property some approximative closed formulas are deduced for the total persistent current at $T=0$ on finite Aharonov-Bohm cylinders. Moreover, it is shown that all the persistent currents on finite cylinders or rings have similar non-relativistic limits.