If a light beam has a corkscrew-shaped wavefront, rather than the usual series of flat planes, it carries orbital angular momentum, the property we usually associate with a planet or an orbiting electron. In the past few years, experimenters have shown a similar effect in electron beams, thanks to the wavelike nature of electrons. Now a team has demonstrated intense electron beams with angular momentum hundreds of times greater than the electron’s spin, which could be used both for fundamental studies and to probe the properties of magnetic materials -- Don Monroe, writing for APS Physics.
Posted on: Fri, 23 Jan 2015 22:01:38 +0000
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