And now back to the mystery of the potential. Aharonov and Bohm published their findings in 1959 and the reception was mixed.- Certainly in the beginning, many people thought that it can't be true.
So you lose this specificity when you grow from a potential to an electric field. And Aharonov wasn't comfortable with that. So he thought, what if every quantum system was actually influenced by the potential and not by the field. - Right.
But really what's responsible for these, you know, even phase changes were still the fields. But you spoke to Aharonov . - Yeah. - And that wasn't his take.
in the absence of any force. But some physicists supported Aharonov and Bohm. Richard Feynman wrote, "The fact that the vector potential appears in the wave equation of quantum mechanics was obvious from the day it was written.
When he fired the beams again, the interference pattern shifted. It seemed that Aharonov and Bohm were right. But critics were unconvinced.
- And that's showing, throwing no shade on their colleague who did these cool experiments. Experimentalists repeatedly tested the Aharonov -Bohm effect, but each trial had flaws that left the result open to debate.
- And that's showing, throwing no shade on their colleague who did these cool experiments. - And yet Aharonov 's own perspective has shifted from camp one to camp two.
The first to try was a colleague of Aharonov and Bohm's at the University of Bristol, Robert Chambers. Chambers experiment largely followed the setup Aharonov and Bohm proposed with one notable exception. An ideal solenoid would have to be infinitely long, which is physically impossible.
- And that's showing, throwing no shade on their colleague who did these cool experiments. This is the perspective initially favored by Aharonov and Bohm.
- And that's showing, throwing no shade on their colleague who did these cool experiments. So it seems like the gravitational Aharonov and Bohm effect is real.
- When Bohm relocated once more, this time moving to the University of Bristol in England, Aharonov chose to come with him. And it was there in Bristol in the 1950s that Aharonov and Bohm stumbled upon something huge. - For a long time, I was thinking more and more deeply about the interpretation of quantum mechanics.
So how do you devise an experiment that can yield a measurable result? Well, Aharonov enlisted the help of his mentor Bohm, and together they came up with the following theoretical experiment. It starts with a beam of electrons, which is split into two.
The longer the solenoid, the weaker the field in the surrounding space. For simplicity, Aharonov and Bohm imagined a setup with an ideal, infinitely long solenoid, one where the magnetic field outside the coil is exactly zero. After traveling on opposite sides of the solenoid, the electron beams are redirected back towards each other by the researchers.
Someone had to actually do the experiment. The first to try was a colleague of Aharonov and Bohm's at the University of Bristol, Robert Chambers. Chambers experiment largely followed the setup Aharonov and Bohm proposed with one notable exception.
Many of Bohm's academic peers were put off by his more unorthodox ideas, including his radical interpretation of quantum mechanics and his new theory of human consciousness. But there was one student who was enthralled by Bohm's approach, and that was Yakir Aharonov . - He was, first of all, extremely, extremely bright, and also had a very nice personality.
- How do you do that? - Complicated. See, Aharonov had to design an experiment that would send a particle through a region where there's no electric or magnetic field, but there is a potential.
- And that's showing, throwing no shade on their colleague who did these cool experiments. But the rest, well, it depends on whether the Aharonov -Bohm effect is real or not.
- And that's showing, throwing no shade on their colleague who did these cool experiments. - While non-locality remains a controversial idea, a sizable portion of physicists do side with Aharonov .
So it was beautiful to interact with him. - When Bohm relocated once more, this time moving to the University of Bristol in England, Aharonov chose to come with him. And it was there in Bristol in the 1950s that Aharonov and Bohm stumbled upon something huge.
Richard Feynman wrote, "The fact that the vector potential appears in the wave equation of quantum mechanics was obvious from the day it was written. It seems strange in retrospect that no one thought of discussing this experiment until 1959, when Bohm and Aharonov first suggested it and made the whole question crystal clear." Feynman included himself that statement.
- And that's showing, throwing no shade on their colleague who did these cool experiments. And when they let this interfere and accounted for all other effects, they could clearly see the phase shift as predicted by Aharonov and Bohm.
- And that's showing, throwing no shade on their colleague who did these cool experiments. And just because things haven't changed in let's say 200 years, roughly between say Lagrange and Aharonov -Bohm, they still could change, right?