Measuring the orbital angular momentum spectrum of an electron beam

Abstract

Electron waves that carry orbital angular momentum (OAM) are characterized by a quantized and unbounded magnetic dipole moment parallel to their propagation direction. When interacting with magnetic materials, the wavefunctions of such electrons are inherently modified. Such variations therefore motivate the need to analyse electron wavefunctions, especially their wavefronts, to obtain information regarding the material’s structure. Here, we propose, design and demonstrate the performance of a device based on nanoscale holograms for measuring an electron’s OAM components by spatially separating them. We sort pure and superposed OAM states of electrons with OAM values of between −10 and 10. We employ the device to analyse the OAM spectrum of electrons that have been affected by a micron-scale magnetic dipole, thus establishing that our sorter can be an instrument for nanoscale magnetic spectroscop