Electron vortex beams in a magnetic field and spin filter

Abstract

We investigate the propagation of electron vortex beams in a magnetic field. It is pointed out that when electron vortex beams carrying orbital angular momentum propagate in a magnetic field, the Berry curvature associated with the scalar electron moving in a cyclic path around the vortex line is modified from that in free space. This alters the spin-orbit interaction, which affects the propagation of nonparaxial beams. The electron vortex beams with tilted vortex lead to spin Hall effect in free space. In presence of a magnetic field in time space we have spin filtering such that either positive or negative spin states emerge in spin Hall currents with clustering of spin $\frac{1}{2}$ states.

Accepted for publication in Phys.Rev. A

References in corpus (4)

• Semiclassical Dynamics of Electron Wave Packet States with Phase Vortices
• Geometrodynamics of polarized light: Berry phase and spin Hall effect in a gradient-index medium
• Electron vortex beams in a magnetic field: A new twist on Landau levels and Aharonov-Bohm states
• Topological spin transport of relativistic electron

Cited by in corpus (3)

• Manipulating twisted electron beams
• Electric quadrupole moment and the tensor magnetic polarizability of twisted electrons and a potential for their measurements
• The Geometric phase and fractional orbital angular momentum states in electron vortex beams