Twisting Neutral Particles with Electric Fields

Abstract

We demonstrate that spin-orbit coupled states are generated in neutral magnetic spin 1/2 particles travelling through an electric field. The quantization axis of the orbital angular momentum is parallel to the electric field, hence both longitudinal and transverse orbital angular momentum can be created. Furthermore we show that the total angular momentum of the particle is conserved. Finally we propose a neutron optical experiment to measure the transverse effect.