Relativistic electron vortex beams: angular momentum and spin-orbit interaction

Motivated by the recent discovery of electron vortex beams carrying orbital angular momentum (AM), we construct exact Bessel-beam solutions of the Dirac equation. They describe relativistic and nonparaxial corrections to the scalar electron beams. We describe the spin and orbital AM of the electron...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inPhysical review letters Vol. 107; no. 17; p. 174802
Main Authors Bliokh, Konstantin Y, Dennis, Mark R, Nori, Franco
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States 17.10.2011
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Summary:Motivated by the recent discovery of electron vortex beams carrying orbital angular momentum (AM), we construct exact Bessel-beam solutions of the Dirac equation. They describe relativistic and nonparaxial corrections to the scalar electron beams. We describe the spin and orbital AM of the electron with Berry-phase corrections and predict the intrinsic spin-orbit coupling in free space. This can be observed as a spin-dependent probability distribution of the focused electron vortex beams. Moreover, the magnetic moment is calculated, which shows different g factors for spin and orbital AM and also contains the Berry-phase correction.
ISSN:1079-7114
DOI:10.1103/physrevlett.107.174802