Electron vortices in spin-orbit coupling system

Abstract

There exists an electron vortex solution with orbital angular momentum quantum in a non-spin-orbit coupling system which has nonconservative orbital angular momentum. We discuss the system with spin-orbit coupling and nonconservative orbital angular momentum, and we can find that the electrons with the total angular momentum numbers also have vortex beam solutions. And the vortex beam is expressed as an entangled wave function of the spin wave function and the vortex wave function. Taking the electrons in the central force field for example, in this paper constructed is a spinor vortex structure which is caused by the propagation of electrons carrying a fixed quantum number of total angular momentum along the <i>z</i>-axis. The spinor vortex structure is under the condition that the orbital angular momentum caused by spin-orbit coupling is non-conserved but the total angular momentum is conserved. The corresponding electron vortex beams in spin-vortex entanglement are solved by perturbation method, and the Foldy-Wouthuysen transformation is utilized to show that the vortex solution of the four-component spinor does exist in the case of relativity, when the electron with a fixed total angular momentum quantum number propagates along the <i>z</i>-axis in the central force field. The spinor provides theoretical support for the existence of the vortex structure for the system where the orbital angular momentum is not conserved but the total angular momentum is conserved due to spin-orbit coupling.