Image of the Week 23/01/17

By Thomas Farrell on January 23, 2017

Our first JPhysB Image of the Week for 2017 comes from a recently published article by B Zygleman on The molecular Aharonov-Bohm effect redux. The Aharonov-Bohm effect is important for understanding the behaviour of various exotic forms of quantum matter. In their paper, Zygleman explains:

The Aharonov–Bohm (AB) effect…describes the behavior of a charged particle in the presence of a gauge vector potential that does not impress a Lorentz force on the particle, but nevertheless exerts a profound influence on its scattering properties.

In this paper, Zygleman considers the molecular AB effect, a similar effect for polyatomic systems which possess “conical intersections” between potential energy surfaces. Through their model they show the signatures of AB-like scattering in these structures.

density plots of imaginary par of packet amplitude at different times. Iniitial wave packet incident at top and conical intersection is at midpoint. Different energies as you go down. left and right different hamiltonians

To show this they model packet amplitudes incident on a conical intersection. The images above are density plots of the imaginary part of the packet amplitude at a particular time. The initial wave packet is incident at the top of each panel, and the conical intersection at the centre. Each row shows a different energy, and the columns are for two different Hamiltonians.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Image taken and front image adapted from B Zygelman 2017 J. Phys. B: At. Mol. Opt. Phys. 50 02510, © IOP Publishing, All Rights Reserved.