Electron Charge and Current Densities, the Geometrie Phase and Cellular Automata
Some consequences of the quantum fluid dynamics formulation are discussed for excited states of atoms and molecules and for time-dependent processes. It is shown that the conservation of electronic current density j(r) allows us to manufacture a gauge potential for each excited state of an atom, molecule or atom in a molecule. This potential gives rise to a tube of magnetic flux carried around by the many-electron system. In time-dependent situations, the evolution of the electronic density distribution can be followed with simple, site-dependent cellular automaton (CA) rules. The CA consists of a lattice of sites, each with a finite set of possible values, here representing finite localized elements of electronic charge and current density (since the charge density rno longer suffices to fully characterize a time-dependent system, it needs to be supplemented with information about the current density j).Our numerical results are presented elsewhere and further developmentis in progress.