Comment on ‘The effect of radial acceleration on the electric and magnetic fields of circular currents and rotating charges’

In a recent paper in this journal, Jefimenko (Jefimenko O D 2001 J. Phys. A: Math. Gen. 34 6143–56) used time-dependent generalizations of the Coulomb and Biot–Savart laws to infer the existence of ‘electrokinetic’ and ‘magnetokinetic’ fields due to radial acceleration of charges in circular motion. It is shown here that for the stationary charge and current distributions discussed in Jefimenko’s paper, the ‘electrokinetic’ and ‘magnetokinetic’ fields are zero. In particular, there is no ‘electrokinetic’ field outside an infinitely long, uniformly charged and steadily rotating hollow cylinder, and there is no electric field whatsoever outside an infinitely long cylindrical solenoid. It follows that the classical explanation of the Aharonov–Bohm effect proposed by Jefimenko is invalid. PACS numbers: 41.20.−q, 03.50.De