On electron channeling and the de Broglie internal clock

Abstract

Electron channeling in silicon crystals has brought forward the possibility of having detected the particle's "de Broglie internal clock", as giving rise to the observed resonance peak at the center of the expected transmission probability dip. A classical multiple scattering calculation fails to represent the experimental results unless, surprisingly, the interaction frequency is twice the de Broglie's clock frequency, that is, the "Zitterbewegung" frequency. In the present paper, the observed characteristics of this process are shown to be consistent with a free particle quantum mechanical motion described by Dirac's Hamiltonian.