The Aharonov-Bohm effect in a closed flux line

TL;DR

This paper provides an exact, simplified, and topologically rigorous treatment of the Aharonov-Bohm effect for a closed flux line, demonstrating its invariance and topological nature, and questioning the physical significance of the vector potential.

Contribution

It introduces a formal treatment of the AB effect for a closed flux line of arbitrary shape, linking it to topological invariants and comparing it to the infinite flux line case.

Findings

AB phase determined by linking number

Two-slit interference shift matches infinite flux line case

Topological invariance of the AB phase

Abstract

The Aharonov-Bohm (AB) effect was convincingly demonstrated using a micro-sized toroidal magnet but it is almost always explained using an infinitely-long solenoid or an infinitely-long flux line. The main reason for this is that the formal treatment of the AB effect considering a toroidal configuration is too cumbersome. But if the micro-sized toroidal magnet is modelled by a closed flux line of arbitrary shape and size then the formal treatment of the AB effect is exact, considerably simplified, and well-justified. Here we present such a treatment that covers in detail the electromagnetic, topological, and quantum-mechanical aspects of this effect. We demonstrate that the AB phase in a closed flux line is determined by a linking number and has the same form as the AB phase in an infinitely-long flux line which is determined by a winding number. We explicitly show that the two-slit interference shift associated with the AB effect in a closed flux line is the same as that associated with an infinitely-long flux line. We emphasise the topological nature of the AB phase in a closed flux line by demonstrating that this phase is invariant under deformations of the charge path, deformations of the closed flux line, simultaneous deformations of the charge path and the closed flux line, and the interchange between the charge path and the closed flux line. We also discuss the local and nonlocal interpretations of the AB effect in a closed flux line and introduce a non-singular gauge in which the vector potential vanishes in all space except on the surface surrounded by the closed flux line, implying that this potential is zero along the path of the charged particle except on the crossing point where this path intersects the surface bounded by the closed flux line, a result that questions the alleged physical significance of the vector potential and the local interpretation of the AB effect.