Classical understanding of electron vortex beams in a uniform magnetic field

Abstract

Recently, interesting observations on electron vortex beams have been made. We propose a classical model that shows vortex-like motion due to suitably-synchronized motion of each electron's cyclotron motion in a uniform magnetic field. It is shown that some basic features of electron vortex beams in a uniform magnetic field, such as azimuthal currents, the relation between energy and kinetic angular momentum, and the parallel-axis theorem are understandable by using this classical model. We also show that the time-dependence of kinetic angular momentum of electron vortex beams could be understood as an effect of a specific nonuniform distribution of classical electrons.