Fractional Aharonov-Bohm effect for retarded potentials

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251010333v1.pdf (437.39 KB)

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http://arxiv.org/abs/2510.10333

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https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2510.10333
 http://hdl.handle.net/11603/40797

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UMBC Faculty Collection
UMBC Physics Department

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2025-10-11

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journal articles
preprints
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Subjects

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
Quantum Physics
UMBC Quantum Information Group

Abstract

It has been suggested that the magnetic Aharonov-Bohm effect can be interpreted equally well as being due to a phase shift associated with an electron in an interferometer enclosing a magnetic flux, or as a phase shift associated with the electrons in the solenoid that generates the field. Here the Aharonov-Bohm effect is derived using second-quantized field theory to describe all the electrons as well as the electromagnetic field in a consistent way. The results are in agreement with the usual expression for the Aharonov-Bohm effect when the retardation of the electromagnetic field is negligible, but they predict the possibility of a fractional phase shift when retardation effects are significant.