A Stern-Gerlach-like approach to electron orbital angular momentum measurement

Abstract

Many methods now exist to prepare free electrons into orbital angular momentum states, and the predicted applications of these electron states as probes of materials and scattering processes are numerous. The development of electron orbital angular momentum measurement techniques has lagged behind. We show that coupling between electron orbital angular momentum and a spatially varying magnetic field produces an angular momentum-dependent focusing effect. We propose a design for an orbital angular momentum measurement device built on this principle. As the method of measurement is non-interferometric, the device works equally well for mixed, superposed and pure final orbital angular momentum states. The energy and orbital angular momentum distributions of inelastically scattered electrons may be simultaneously measurable with this technique.

References in corpus (4)

• Synthesis and characterization of attosecond light vortices in the extreme ultraviolet
• Achieving atomic resolution magnetic dichroism by controlling the phase symmetry of an electron probe
• Quantitative measurement of orbital angular momentum in electron microscopy
• Disentangling multipole contributions to collective excitations in fullerenes

Cited by in corpus (10)

• Theory and applications of free-electron vortex states
• Ultrafast Generation and Control of an Electron Vortex Beam via Chiral Plasmonic Near Fields
• Experimental demonstration of an electrostatic orbital angular momentum sorter for electrons
• Tailored high-contrast attosecond electron pulses for coherent excitation and scattering
• Entanglement of Orbital Angular Momentum in Non-Sequential Double Ionization
• Quantum phenomena in attosecond science
• EMCD with an electron vortex filter: Limitations and possibilities
• Generation of electron vortex states in ionization by intense and short laser pulses
• Electron vortex beams in non-uniform magnetic fields
• Automatic alignment of an orbital angular momentum sorter in a transmission electron microscope using a convolution neural network