Abstract
We study the Aharonov-Casher effect and its electromagnetic-dual effect, introduced by He, McKellar, and Wilkens, in dimensions. In this restricted space these effects are the result of the interaction of the electromagnetic field tensor with the dual of a current. Transferring the dual operation from the current to the field tensor shows that this interaction may be reinterpreted as due to the interaction of an effective vector potential and a current, and the topological effects follow immediately. The restriction to dimensions, with this interpretation, provides a unified way of treating these topological effects for an arbitrary spin, and a general proof for this case is provided. Perhaps more interestingly the treatment shows that a spin-0 particle can show these effects, although it has no magnetic or electric dipole moment in the usual sense.
- Received 15 September 2000
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.64.022102
©2001 American Physical Society