The Aharanov-Bohm Effect
Published:
What is the vector potential, really? Besides a mathematical trick envoked to exploit the fact that the magnetic is always incompressible, undergraduates (such as myself) were never shown a satisfying explanation. We go through our electromagnetism classes spiting it, thinking to ourselves that “if the universe were more symmetric, it wouldn’t exist!” when in fact the truth could not be more different. This strange potential function is undoubtedly the most used and applied field in all of physics, and its importance to the theory of quantum mechanics, from lattice gauge theory to particle physics, cannot be overstated. In what follows, I hope to convince you, a young physicist of limited knowledge and strong conviction, that this potential is not simply a mathematical construct. That it is perhaps the piece with the deepest and most resonant consequences.