The quantum mechanical effects of magnetic fields confined to inaccessible regions

✍ Scribed by Murray Peshkin; Igal Talmi; Lindsay J Tassie

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1961
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 551 KB
• Volume: 12
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0003-4916
• DOI: 10.1016/0003-4916(61)90069-0

✦ Synopsis

When an electron is confined to a multiply connected region, fixed external magnetic fields in the excluded spaces can have observable effects on the scattering of the electron, as was recently pointed out by Aharanov and Bohm. These effects occur also in bound state problems. Quantization of a simple mechanical model of the source of the field shows that it is indeed correct to treat the field as external. The observable effects are necessary for consistency with the uncertainty principle and with the classical limit.They arisenot from forces exerted by the magnetic fields or by their vector potentials, but from modification of the quantum conditions.