Helical beams of electrons in a magnetic field: new analytic solutions of the Schrödinger and Dirac equations

Abstract

We derive new solutions of the Schrödinger, Klein–Gordon and Dirac equations which describe the motion of particles in a uniform magnetic field. In contrast to the well known stationary solutions, our solutions exhibit the behavior of quantum particles which very closely resembles classical helical trajectories. These solutions also serve as an illustration of the meaning of the Ehrenfest theorem in relativistic quantum mechanics.