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Vacuum-induced current density from a magnetic flux threading a cosmic dispiration in ()-dimensional spacetime
Phys. Rev. D 114, 025007 – Published 8 July, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/nnt2-28f2
Abstract
We investigate the vacuum-induced current density for a charged scalar field in a ()-dimensional cosmic dispiration spacetime threaded by a magnetic flux. This background combines a cosmic string and a screw dislocation, yielding a nontrivial helical geometry. By constructing the normalized mode functions of the Klein-Gordon equation, we evaluate the Wightman function and obtain the vacuum expectation value of the current density. We show that, in addition to the azimuthal component describing a persistent current around the defect, a nonvanishing axial component is induced as a direct consequence of the helical structure of the spacetime. Both components are periodic functions of the magnetic flux depending only on its fractional part, reflecting the Aharonov-Bohm nature of the effect. Closed expressions are obtained for massive and massless fields in arbitrary dimensions. We demonstrate that the screw dislocation parameter plays a crucial role in the behavior of the induced currents, leading to the regularization of the components at the origin and controlling their magnitude. Their asymptotic behavior is also analyzed in detail. Our results reduce to known expressions in the absence of the screw dislocation, providing a consistency check. In particular, we examine the physically relevant ()-dimensional case, where numerical analysis reveals nontrivial features arising from the interplay between topology and gauge effects.
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