Paper detail

Revisiting the Marton, Simpson, and Suddeth experimental confirmation of the Aharonov-Bohm effect

We perform an "archeological" study of one of the original experiments used as evidence for the static, time-independent Aharonov-Bohm effect. Since the experiment in question [L. Marton, J. A. Simpson, and J. A. Suddeth, Rev. Sci. Instr. 25, 1099 (1954)] involved a time varying magnetic field we show that there are problems with the explanation of this experiment as a confirmation of the static Aharonov-Bohm effect -- specifically the previous analysis ignored the electric field which arises in conjunction with a time-varying magnetic flux. We further argue that the results of this experiment do in fact conform exactly to the recent prediction [D. Singleton and E. Vagenas, Phys. Lett. B723, 241 (2013); J. MacDougall and D. Singleton, J. Math. Phys. 55, 042101 (2014)] of a cancellation between the magnetic and electric phase shifts for the time-dependent Aharonov-Bohm effect. To resolve this issue a new time-dependent Aharonov-Bohm experiment is called for.