Magnetic monopole field exposed by electrons

By A. Béché, R. Van Boxem, G. van Tendeloo, J. Verbeeck. Nature Physics, 2013

155 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Magnetic monopoles continue to be elusive. However, an experiment now shows that the interaction of an electron beam with the tip of a nanoscopically thin magnetic needle—a close approximation to a magnetic monopole field—generates an electron vortex state, as expected for a true magnetic monopole field. The experimental search for magnetic monopole particles1,2,3 has, so far, been in vain. Nevertheless, these elusive particles of magnetic charge have fuelled a rich field of theoretical study4,5,6,7,8,9,10. Here, we created an approximation of a magnetic monopole in free space at the end of a long, nanoscopically thin magnetic needle11. We experimentally demonstrate that the interaction of this approximate magnetic monopole field with a beam of electrons produces an electron vortex state, as theoretically predicted for a true magnetic monopole3,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18. This fundamental quantum mechanical scattering experiment is independent of the speed of the electrons and has consequences for all situations where electrons meet such monopole magnetic fields, as, for example, in solids. The set-up not only shows an attractive way to produce electron vortex states but also provides a unique insight into monopole fields and shows that electron vortices might well occur in unexplored solid-state physics situations.

Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Biomedical Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f418a5055ecfe0f29e19208a8eb95ab8ebf0a8fb

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Citations in the corpus

Theory and applications of free-electron vortex states (2017, methodology): “magnetic field such as the objective back focal plane [92, 232, 144]”
Roadmap on structured light (2016, background): “erated upon propagation through magnetic spiral phase plates provided by the field of a magnetic monopole [212], which can be approximated by the field surrounding the tip of a magnetic needle [213, 214].”
Electron vortices: Beams with orbital angular momentum (2017, background): “In the absence of such monopoles, the edge fields of a suitable thin wire magnetised along its long axis have been shown to induce a phase ramp around the beam that approaches 2⇡ (Béché et al., 2013; Blackburn and Loudon, 2014), opening the possibility of producing high-intensity vortex beams, in ad”