AC Stark effect or time-dependent Aharonov-Bohm effect for particle on a ring

We study the effect of a time-varying solenoidal vector potential for a quantum particle confined to a ring. The setup appears to be a time-varying version of the Aharonov-Bohm effect, but since the particle moves in the presence of fields, it is not strictly an Aharonov-Bohm effect. The results are similar to the ac Stark effect, but with a time-varying electric field coming from the vector potential, rather than the scalar potential. We compare and contrast the present effect with the standard ac Stark effect. The signature of this setup is the generation of quasi-energy sidebands which are observable via spectroscopy.

💡 Research Summary

The paper investigates a quantum particle of charge e and mass m confined to a one‑dimensional ring of radius R when a solenoidal magnetic flux threading the ring is made to oscillate in time. The authors begin by recalling the static case: with a constant flux Φ₀ the Hamiltonian obtained by minimal coupling is H =