Work

Elastic scattering of twisted electrons by diatomic molecules

Year: 2018

Type: article

Abstract: The elastic scattering of twisted electrons by diatomic molecules is studied within the framework of the nonrelativistic first Born approximation. In this process, the coherent interaction of incident electrons with two molecular centers may cause interference patterns in the angular distributions of outgoing particles. We investigate how this Young-type interference is influenced by the complex internal structure of twisted beams. In particular, we show that the corkscrewlike phase front and the inhomogeneous intensity profile of the incident beam can strongly modify the angular distribution of electrons, scattered off a single well-localized molecule. For the collision with a macroscopic target, composed of randomly distributed but aligned molecules, the angular-differential cross section may reveal valuable information about the transverse and longitudinal momenta of twisted states. To illustrate the difference between the scattering of twisted and plane-wave beams for both single-molecule and macroscopic-target scenarios, detailed calculations have been performed for a ${\mathrm{H}}_{2}$ target.

Source: Physical Review A

DOI: 10.1103/physreva.98.042701

Authors: A. V. Maiorova, S. Fritzsche, R. A. Müller, A. Surzhykov

Institutions: Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University, Helmholtz Institute Jena, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt, Technische Universität Braunschweig

Language: English

Topic: Orbital Angular Momentum in Optics

Subfield: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

Field: Physics and Astronomy

Domain: Physical Sciences

Open Access status: green

Funders: Russian Foundation for Basic Research, Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation

Awards: G4788126150, G6834779093