New expressions for the Aharonov-Bohm phase and consequences for the fundamentals of quantum mechanics

Abstract

We focus on new expressions for the Aharonov-Bohm (AB) phase proposed recently by C. Marletto and V. Vedral (Phys. Rev. Lett. 125, 040401 (2020)) and by our team (A. L. Kholmetskii et al., Ann. Phys., 434, 168627 (2021)). We emphasize the mismatch between the standard expression for the electric component of the AB phase and the expression by Marletto and Vedral for this component, which, as we show, has fundamental roots and indicates the need to use different expressions for the Hamiltonian of the radiative component and bound component of the electromagnetic (EM) field. We further show that the corrected expression for the AB phase of Marletto and Vedral and our expression for the AB phase do not coincide with its standard representation through the potentials of EM field (Y. Aharonov, D. Bohm, Phys. Rev. 115 (1959) 485) and contain additional terms, which straightforwardly allow to re-express the AB phase via electric and magnetic fields instead of scalar and vector potentials. The recognition of the field-dependent origin of the AB effect also requires to re-express the Hamiltonian of a charged particle through the EM field, which we show can be done in the only possible way. We discuss the physical meaning of the AB effect with the primary role of the EM field and also discuss some general quantum mechanical implications.