A General Method for Deriving Vector Potentials Produced by Knotted Solenoids

Abstract

A general method for deriving exact expressions for vector potentials produced by arbitrarily knotted solenoids is presented. It consists of using simple physics ideas from magnetostatics to evaluate the magnetic field in a surrogate problem. The latter is obtained by modelling the knot with wire segments carrying steady currents on a cubical lattice. The expressions for a 31 (trefoil) and a 41 (figure-eight) knot are explicitly worked out. The results are of some importance in the study of the Aharonov-Bohm effect generalised to a situation in which charged particles moving through force-free regions are scattered by fluxes confined to the interior of knotted impenetrable tubes.