Spin effects in Kapitza-Dirac scattering at light with elliptical polarization

Abstract

The Kapitza-Dirac effect, which refers to electron scattering at standing light waves, is studied in the Bragg regime with counterpropagating elliptically polarized electromagnetic waves with the same intensity, wavelength, and degree of polarization for two different setups. In the first setup, where the electric-field components of the counterpropagating waves have the same sense of rotation, we find distinct spin effects. The spins of the scattered electrons and of the nonscattered electrons, respectively, precess with a frequency that is of the order of the Bragg-reflection Rabi frequency. When the electric-field components of the counterpropagating waves have an opposite sense of rotation, which is the second considered setup, the standing wave has linear polarization, and no spin effects can be observed. Our results are based on numerical solutions of the time-dependent Dirac equation and the analytical solution of a relativistic Pauli equation, which accounts for the leading relativistic effects.

References in corpus (6)

• The Magnus expansion and some of its applications
• Spin dynamics in the Kapitza-Dirac effect
• Spin polarized electron-positron pair production via elliptical polarized laser fields
• Electron-spin dynamics in elliptically polarized light waves
• Hole dynamics and spin currents after ionization in strong circularly polarized laser fields
• Spin-dependent two-color Kapitza-Dirac effects

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• Parameter space investigation for spin-dependent electron diffraction in the Kapitza-Dirac effect
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• Strong coupling of virtual negative states in the Kapitza-Dirac effect
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