Ionization of hydrogen by electron vortex beam

Abstract

Optical vortex beams have an extensive history in terms of both theory and experiment, but only recently have electron vortex beams been proposed and realized. The possible applications of these matter vortex waves are numerous, but a fundamental understanding of their interactions with atoms and molecules has not yet been developed. In this work, fully differential cross sections for fast (e, 2e) collisions using electron vortex projectiles with small amounts of quantized orbital angular momentum are presented. A comparison is made with the fully differential cross sections using plane wave projectiles and a detailed study of angular momentum transfer is included. Results indicate that ionization by electron vortex beam projectiles is less likely than for plane wave projectiles, and for the special case of aligned collisions, the angular momentum of the incident electron is transferred directly to the ionized electron.