Induced fermionic charge and current densities in two-dimensional rings

Abstract

For a massive quantum fermionic field, we investigate the vacuum expectation values (VEVs) of the charge and current densities induced by an external magnetic flux in a two-dimensional circular ring. Both the irreducible representations of the Clifford algebra are considered. On the ring edges the bag (infinite mass) boundary conditions are imposed for the field operator. This leads to the Casimir type effect on the vacuum characteristics. The radial current vanishes. The charge and the azimuthal current are decomposed into the boundary-free and boundary-induced contributions. Both these contributions are odd periodic functions of the magnetic flux with the period equal to the flux quantum. An important feature that distinguishes the VEVs of the charge and current densities from the VEV of the energy density, is their finiteness on the ring edges. The current density is equal to the charge density for the outer edge and has the opposite sign on the inner edge. The VEVs are peaked near the inner edge and, as functions of the field mass, exhibit quite different features for two inequivalent representations of the Clifford algebra. We show that, unlike the VEVs in the boundary-free geometry, the vacuum charge and the current in the ring are continuous functions of the magnetic flux and vanish for half-odd integer values of the flux in units of the flux quantum. Combining the results for two irreducible representations, we also investigate the induced charge and current in parity and time-reversal symmetric models. The corresponding results are applied to graphene rings with the electronic subsystem described in terms of the effective Dirac theory with the energy gap. If the energy gaps for two valleys of the graphene hexagonal lattice are the same, the charge densities corresponding to the separate valleys cancel each other, whereas the azimuthal current is doubled.