Reuse & Permissions

It is not necessary to obtain permission to reuse this article or its components as it is available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI are maintained. Please note that some figures may have been included with permission from other third parties. It is your responsibility to obtain the proper permission from the rights holder directly for these figures.

Export citation

Export citation

Choose format for download:

Download Citation
  • Open Access

Aharonov-Bohm effect in the time domain

Sara Meir, Yuval Tamir, Hamootal Duadi, Eliahu Cohen, and Moti Fridman*

  • Faculty of Engineering and the Institute of Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel

  • *Contact author: mordechai.fridman@biu.ac.il

Phys. Rev. Research 7, 033104 – Published 31 July, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/3phs-9rmc

Abstract

In the Aharonov-Bohm effect, charged particles accumulate a phase as they travel in space, encircling a source of magnetic flux. We develop a temporal analog of the Aharonov-Bohm effect, where the photons' path is in the time-domain instead of the spatial domain, and moreover demonstrate it experimentally with entangled photon pairs rather than single, uncorrelated quanta. Relying on the temporal SU(1,1) interferometer, the constructed interferometric scheme excels in its temporal resolution and sensitivity. This system can be applied for quantum-enhanced measurements, metrology at GHz frequencies, advanced sensing of dispersion properties, and high-precision temporal measurements.

View figure in article

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Article Text

Supplemental Material

References (51)

  1. Y. Aharonov and D. Bohm, Significance of electromagnetic potentials in the quantum theory, Phys. Rev. 115, 485 (1959).
  2. Y. Aharonov and D. Bohm, Further considerations on electromagnetic potentials in the quantum theory, Phys. Rev. 123, 1511 (1961).
  3. M. Peshkin and A. Tonomura, The Aharonov–Bohm Effect (Springer, Berlin, 1989).
  4. Y. Aharonov, E. Cohen, and D. Rohrlich, Nonlocality of the Aharonov-Bohm effect, Phys. Rev. A 93, 042110 (2016).
  5. L. Vaidman, Role of potentials in the Aharonov-Bohm effect, Phys. Rev. A 86, 040101(R) (2012).
  6. Y. Aharonov, E. Cohen, and D. Rohrlich, Comment on “Role of potentials in the Aharonov-Bohm effect”, Phys. Rev. A 92, 026101 (2015).
  7. M. V. Arkhipov, R. M. Arkhipov, and N. N. Rosanov, Optical Aharonov—Bohm effect, JETP Lett. 111, 668 (2020).
  8. C. Tan, The Berry phase and the Aharonov-Bohm effect on optical activity, Opt. Express 16, 14675 (2008).
  9. C. Tan, Aharonov–Bohm effect in optical activity, J. Phys. A: Math. Theor. 43, 354007 (2010).
  10. A. Govorov, S. Ulloa, K. Karrai, and R. Warburton, Polarized excitons in nanorings and the optical Aharonov-Bohm effect, Phys. Rev. B 66, 081309(R) (2002).
  11. R. J. Cook, H. Fearn, and P. W. Milonni, Fizeau's experiment and the Aharonov–Bohm effect, Am. J. Phys. 63, 705 (1995).
  12. A. Besharat, M. Miri, and M. Nouri-Zonoz, Optical Aharonov–Bohm effect due to toroidal moment inspired by general relativity, J. Phys. Commun. 3, 115019 (2019).
  13. D. Neshev, A. Nepomnyashchy, and Y. S. Kivshar, Nonlinear Aharonov-Bohm scattering by optical vortices, Phys. Rev. Lett. 87, 043901 (2001).
  14. S. A. Werner and A. G. Klein, Observation of Aharonov–Bohm effects by neutron interferometry, J. Phys. A: Math. Theor. 43, 354006 (2010).
  15. Y. Aharonov and A. Casher, Topological quantum effects for neutral particles, Phys. Rev. Lett. 53, 319 (1984).
  16. C. Overstreet, P. Asenbaum, J. Curti, M. Kim, and M. A. Kasevich, Observation of a gravitational Aharonov-Bohm effect, Science 375, 226 (2022).
  17. M. Anacleto, I. Salako, F. Brito, and E. Passos, Analogue Aharonov-Bohm effect in neo-Newtonian theory, Phys. Rev. D 92, 125010 (2015).
  18. C. Dartora, K. Nobrega, and G. Cabrera, Optical analogue of the Aharonov–Bohm effect using anisotropic media, Phys. Lett. A 375, 2254 (2011).
  19. L. R. Jaroszewicz, Z. Krajewski, and L. Solarz, Absolute rotation measurement based on the Sagnac effect, in Earthquake Source Asymmetry, Structural Media and Rotation Effects, edited by R. Teisseyre, E. Majewski, and M. Takeo (Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2006), pp. 413–438.
  20. E. J. Post, Sagnac effect, Rev. Mod. Phys. 39, 475 (1967).
  21. R. Wang, Y. Zheng, and A. Yao, Generalized Sagnac effect, Phys. Rev. Lett. 93, 143901 (2004).
  22. E. Li, B. J. Eggleton, K. Fang, and S. Fan, Photonic Aharonov–Bohm effect in photon–phonon interactions, Nat. Commun. 5, 3225 (2014).
  23. K. Fang, Z. Yu, and S. Fan, Photonic Aharonov-Bohm effect based on dynamic modulation, Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 153901 (2012).
  24. N. Satapathy, D. Pandey, P. Mehta, S. Sinha, J. Samuel, and H. Ramachandran, Classical light analogue of the non-local Aharonov-Bohm effect, Europhys. Lett. 97, 50011 (2012).
  25. S. Meir, Y. Tamir, H. Duadi, E. Cohen, and M. Fridman, Ultrafast temporal SU(1,1) interferometer, Phys. Rev. Lett. 130, 253601 (2023).
  26. M. Genovese, Experimental quantum enhanced optical interferometry, AVS Quantum Sci. 3, 044702 (2021).
  27. D. Salykina and F. Khalili, Sensitivity of quantum-enhanced interferometers, Symmetry 15, 774 (2023).
  28. M. D. Lang and C. M. Caves, Optimal quantum-enhanced interferometry, Phys. Rev. A 90, 025802 (2014).
  29. A. Cabral and J. Rebordão, Accuracy of frequency-sweeping interferometry for absolute distance metrology, Opt. Eng. 46, 073602 (2007).
  30. A. Cabral and J. Rebordao, Absolute distance metrology with frequency sweeping interferometry, in Recent Developments in Traceable Dimensional Measurements III (SPIE, San Diego, California, 2005), Vol. 5879, pp. 195–204.
  31. S. P. Velsko and D. Eimerl, Precise measurements of optical dispersion using a new interferometric technique, Appl. Opt. 25, 1344 (1986).
  32. X. Lou, Y. Wang, and Y. Dong, Multipoint dispersion spectroscopic gas sensing by optical FMCW interferometry, Opt. Lett. 46, 5950 (2021).
  33. Y. Zhang, Z. Zeng, L. Zhang, X. Zou, F. Yang, Z. Zhang, S. Zhang, H. Li, and Y. Liu, Ultrafast and high-precision time delay measurement based on complementary frequency-swept light and frequency-shifted dechirping, J. Lightwave Technol. 42, 1927 (2023).
  34. U. Leonhardt, Casimir cosmology, Int. J. Mod. Phys. A 37, 2241006 (2022).
  35. M. Cromb, G. M. Gibson, E. Toninelli, M. J. Padgett, E. M. Wright, and D. Faccio, Amplification of waves from a rotating body, Nat. Phys. 16, 1069 (2020).
  36. I. Brevik and G. Halnes, Light rays at optical black holes in moving media, Phys. Rev. D 65, 024005 (2001).
  37. J. Drori, Y. Rosenberg, D. Bermudez, Y. Silberberg, and U. Leonhardt, Observation of stimulated hawking radiation in an optical analogue, Phys. Rev. Lett. 122, 010404 (2019).
  38. D. Faccio, T. Arane, M. Lamperti, and U. Leonhardt, Optical black hole lasers, Class. Quantum Grav. 29, 224009 (2012).
  39. D. Han, E. E. Hardekopf, and Y. S. Kim, Thomas precession and squeezed states of light, Phys. Rev. A 39, 1269 (1989).
  40. A. Retzker, Y. Aharonov, A. Botero, S. Nussinov, and B. Reznik, Aharonov-Bohm effect without closing a loop, Phys. Rev. A 73, 032106 (2006).
  41. D. Singleton and E. C. Vagenas, The covariant, time-dependent Aharonov–Bohm effect, Phys. Lett. B 723, 241 (2013).
  42. M. Bright and D. Singleton, Time-dependent non-Abelian Aharonov-Bohm effect, Phys. Rev. D 91, 085010 (2015).
  43. K. Ma, J.-H. Wang, and H.-X. Yang, Time-dependent Aharonov–Bohm effect on the noncommutative space, Phys. Lett. B 759, 306 (2016).
  44. G. P. Agrawal, Nonlinear fiber optics, in Nonlinear Science at the Dawn of the 21st Century, edited by P. L. Christiansen, M. P. Sorensen, and A. C. Scott (Springer, Berlin, 2000), pp. 195–211.
  45. See Supplemental Material at http://link.aps.org/supplemental/10.1103/3phs-9rmc for a detailed derivation of the analytical expressions and discuss technical details related to the experimental setup.
  46. A. Klein, I. Sibony, S. Meir, S. Shahal, H. Duadi, and M. Fridman, Overlapping time-lens array, IEEE Photon. J. 11, 1 (2019).
  47. A. Klein, I. Sibony, S. Meir, H. Duadi, M. Y. Sander, and M. Fridman, Temporal imaging with a high filling factor, APL Photonics 5, 090801 (2020).
  48. Y. Zhang, C. Tao, S. Luo, K. Y. Lau, J. Zheng, L. Huang, A. Zhang, L. Sheng, Q. Ling, Z. Guan et al., Ultra-fast optical time-domain transformation techniques, Nat. Rev. Methods Primers 5, 11 (2025).
  49. S. Meir, A. Klein, H. Duadi, E. Cohen, and M. Fridman, Single-shot analysis of amplified correlated light, Opt. Express 30, 1773 (2022).
  50. A. Klein, S. Shahal, S. Meir, H. Duadi, K. Sulimany, O. Lib, H. Steinberg, S. A. Kolpakov, and M. Fridman, Ultrafast twin-peak rogue waves in a vector field, OSA Continuum 2, 3102 (2019).
  51. P. Samuelsson, E. V. Sukhorukov, and M. Büttiker, Two-particle Aharonov-Bohm effect and entanglement in the electronic hanbury Brown–Twiss setup, Phys. Rev. Lett. 92, 026805 (2004).

Outline

Information

Sign In to Your Journals Account

Filter

Filter

Article Lookup

Enter a citation