Aharonov-Bohm effect and the mass of the photon

We show that the Aharonov-Bohm effect requires that the vector potential couple minimally to matter, not that it be a gauge field: The effect is present in massive (finite-range) electrodynamics, reducing smoothly to the original result in the limit of infinite range. Indeed, it may be used to provide an experimental bound on the range which is much larger than the ‘‘table-top’’ apparatus, namely a lower limit of order ${10}^2$ km.