Spin effects on the cyclotron frequency for a Dirac electron

Abstract

The Barut--Zanghi (BZ) theory can be regarded as the most satisfactory picture of a classical spinning electron and constitutes a natural "classical limit" of the Dirac equation. The BZ model has been analytically studied in some previous papers of ours in the case of free particles. By contrast, in this letter we consider the case of external fields, and a previously found equation of the motion is generalized for a non-free spin-1/2 particle. In the important case of a spinning charge in a uniform magnetic field, we find that its angular velocity (along its circular orbit around the magnetic field direction) is slightly different from the classical "cyclotron frequency" eH/m which is expected to hold for spinless charges. As a matter of fact, the angular velocity results to depend on the spin orientation. As a consequence, the electrons with magnetic moment mu parallel to the magnetic field do rotate with a frequency greater than that of electrons endowed with mu antiparallel to H.

LaTeX; 10 pages

References in corpus (7)

• Kinematics and hydrodynamics of spinning particles
• Spin and Electron Structure
• Electron structure, Zitterbewegung, and the new non-linear Dirac-like equation
• About Zitterbewegung and electron structure
• Spin and Madelung fluid
• Velocity field and operator in (non relativistic) quantum mechanics
• Field theory of the spinning electron: Internal motions

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Spinning-particle model for the Dirac equation and the relativistic Zitterbewegung
• Semiclassical Description of Relativistic Spin without use of Grassmann variables and the Dirac equation
• Zitterbewegung in External Magnetic Field: Classic versus Quantum Approach
• Relativistic Mechanics Theory for Electrons that Exhibits Spin, Zitterbewegung, Superposition and Produces Dirac's Wave Equation