Publication

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

Bliokh, Konstantin Y.
Dennis, Mark R.
Nori, Franco
Citation
Bliokh, Konstantin Y. Dennis, Mark R.; Nori, Franco (2011). Relativistic electron vortex beams: angular momentum and spin-orbit interaction. Physical Review Letters 107 (17),
Abstract
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.
Funder
Publisher
American Physical Society (APS)
Publisher DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.107.174802
Rights
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Ireland