2016/03/10 by Pratul Bandyopadhyay, Banasri Basu, Debashree Chowdhury · 1 citation
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Angular momentum #Beam (structure) #Classical mechanics #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #Condensed matter physics #Electron #Mechanics #Near-Field Optical Microscopy #Optical vortex #Optics #Orbital Angular Momentum in Optics #Paraxial approximation #Physics #Quantum electrodynamics #Quantum mechanics #Spin (aerodynamics) #Vortex #cond-mat.mes-hall #physics.optics #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.116.144801
published as Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 144801,(2016) · Accepted for publication in Phys.Rev.Letts
arxiv created 2016/03/10 · openalex publication_date 2016/04/07 · arxiv updated 2016/05/04 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We have proposed a unified framework towards the dynamics of optical and electron vortex beams from the perspective of the geometric phase and the associated Hall effects. The unification is attributed to the notion that the spin degrees of freedom of a relativistic particle, either massive or massless, are associated with a vortex line. Based on a cylindrical coordinate formulation, which leads to a local vortex structure related to orbital angular momentum (OAM), it can be shown that, when electron vortex beams (EVBs) move in an external electric field, paraxial beams give rise to an OAM Hall effect, and nonparaxial beams with tilted vortices initiate a spin Hall effect in free space as well as in an external field. A similar analysis reveals that the paraxial optical vortex beams (OVBs) in an inhomogeneous medium induce an OAM Hall effect, whereas nonparaxial beams with tilted vortices drive the spin Hall effect. Moreover, both OVBs and EVBs with tilted vortices give rise to OAM states with an arbitrary fractional value.