Angular Momentum of Twisted Radiation from an Electron in Spiral Motion

Abstract

We theoretically demonstrate for the first time that a single free electron in circular/spiral motion emits twisted photons carrying well defined orbital angular momentum along the axis of the electron circulation, in adding to spin angular momentum. We show that, when the electron velocity is relativistic, the radiation field contains harmonic components and the photons of l-th harmonic carry lhbar total angular momentum for each. This work indicates that twisted photons are naturally emitted by free electrons and more ubiquitous in laboratories and in nature than ever been thought.

References in corpus (3)

• Quantized Rotation of Atoms From Photons with Orbital Angular Momentum
• Twisting of light around rotating black holes
• Amplification of OAM Radiation by Astrophysical Masers

Cited by in corpus (20)

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• Shifting physics of vortex particles to higher energies via quantum entanglement
• Vortex $\gamma$ photon generation via spin-to-orbital angular momentum transfer in nonlinear Compton scattering
• Generation of vortex particles via generalized measurements
• Transport in electron-photon systems
• Advances in laser-plasma interactions using intense vortex laser beams
• Generation of hard twisted photons by charged particles in cholesteric liquid crystals
• Microscopic theory of photon-induced energy, momentum, and angular momentum transport in the nonequilibrium regime
• The angular momentum of electron radiation in a uniform magnetic field
• Emission of twisted photons by a scalar charged particle in a strong magnetic field
• Vavilov-Cherenkov emission with a twist: a study of the final entangled state
• Emission of twisted photons by a Dirac electron in a strong magnetic field
• Radiation of twisted photons in elliptical undulators
• Transfer of spin to orbital angular momentum in the Bethe-Heitler process
• Production of twisted particles in heavy-ion collisions
• Observation of transition radiation carrying orbital angular momentum
• Image rotation in plasmas
• Plasma rotation driven by lasers with zero angular momentum
• Twisted particles in heavy-ion collisions