Whirling waves and the Aharonov-Bohm effect for relativistic spinning particles

¹ Instituto de Física, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Caixa Postal 15051, 91501-970 Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil
² Instituto de Física, Universidade de São Paulo, Caixa Postal 20516, 01452-990 São Paulo, SP, Brazil

Received: 5 July 1996
Accepted: 12 December 1996

Abstract

The formulation of Berry for the Aharonov-Bohm effect is generalized to the relativistic regime. Then, the problem of finding the self-adjoint extensions of the (2+1)-dimensional Dirac Hamiltonian, in an Aharonov-Bohm background potential, is solved in a novel way. The same treatment also solves the problem of finding the self-adjoint extensions of the Dirac Hamiltonian in an Aharonov-Casher background.