Revisiting fermion helicity flip in Podolsky's Electromagnetism

Abstract

The spin projection of a massive particle onto its direction of motion is called helicity (or "handedness"). It can therefore be positive or negative. When a particle's helicity changes from positive to negative (or vice-versa) due to its interaction with other particles or fields, we say there is a helicity flip. In this work we show that such helicity flip can be seen for an electron of $20 MeV$ of energy interacting with a charged scalar meson through the exchange of a virtual photon. This photon {\it does not} necessarily need to be Podolsky's proposed photon; in fact, it is independent of it.