Nonuniform Currents and Spins of Relativistic Electron Vortices in a Magnetic Field

Phys Rev Lett. 2017 Jul 21;119(3):030401. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.030401. Epub 2017 Jul 18.

Abstract

We present a relativistic description of electron vortex beams in a homogeneous magnetic field. Including spin from the beginning reveals that spin-polarized electron vortex beams have a complicated azimuthal current structure, containing small rings of counterrotating current between rings of stronger corotating current. Contrary to many other problems in relativistic quantum mechanics, there exists a set of vortex beams with exactly zero spin-orbit mixing in the highly relativistic and nonparaxial regime. The well-defined phase structure of these beams is analogous to simpler scalar vortex beams, owing to the protection by the Zeeman effect. For states that do show spin-orbit mixing, the spin polarization across the beam is nonuniform rendering the spin and orbital degrees of freedom inherently inseparable.