Eur. Phys. J. B (2014) 87: 222
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2014-50106-5

Regular Article

Persistent currents for a moving neutral particle with no permanent electric dipole moment

Departamento de Física, Universidade Federal da Paraíba, Caixa Postal 5008, 58051-970 João Pessoa, PB, Brazil

^a e-mail: kbakke@fisica.ufpb.br

Received: 14 February 2014
Received in final form: 13 June 2014
Published online: 1 October 2014

Abstract

Topological effects on the confinement of a moving neutral particle with an induced electric dipole moment confined to a quantum ring and a two-dimensional quantum dot (described by a hard-wall confining potential) are investigated. It is shown in this work that the spectrum of energy depends on the geometric phase obtained by Wei et al. [H. Wei, R. Han, X. Wei, Phys. Rev. Lett. 75, 2071 (1995)] and persistent currents arise from this dependence in both the quantum ring and the quantum dot. Further, the behaviour of the analogue of the Landau system for a moving electric dipole confined to a two-dimensional quantum dot is discussed, and it is shown that persistent currents are absent in this case.