Aharonov-Bohm scattering of particles with spin

Abstract

The scattering of relativistic spin-one-half particles in an Aharonov-Bohm potential is considered. It is shown that earlier approaches to this problem have neglected a crucial delta function contribution to the potential. By formulating the problem with a source of finite radius which is then allowed to go to zero, it is established that this is the delta function alone that causes solutions that are singular at the origin to become relevant. The changes in the amplitude which arise from the inclusion of spin are seen to modify the cross section for the case of polarized beams. Finally, the calculated Aharonov-Bohm amplitude is shown to describe the scattering of particles with arbitrary spin in the c=∞ limit.