Fringe field induced spin-OAM mixing of twisted electrons

Abstract

We study spin effects in twisted-electron propagation through the entrance or exit region of an axially symmetric magnetic coil. Starting from the Foldy-Wouthuysen reduction of the Dirac equation, we derive a paraxial spinor equation in which the longitudinally varying solenoidal field produces, in addition to the usual diagonal Zeeman term, a transverse Pauli coupling proportional to the fringe-field gradient. The scalar transverse dynamics is treated exactly by the Ermakov mapping, which absorbs the longitudinally dependent focusing into a metaplectic scaling transformation and reduces the orbital evolution to that of a stationary two-dimensional oscillator. On this background, the transverse Pauli term is treated perturbatively and yields an explicit first-order correction for arbitrary realistic solenoidal profiles. Axial symmetry implies conservation of the total projection of angular momentum, so each spin flip is accompanied by a compensating one-quantum change of orbital angular momentum. In addition, the linear coordinate structure of the perturbation restricts the first-order dynamics to at most two neighboring radial sidebands for each incoming oscillator component. We derive the corresponding transition amplitudes and show how their phases are governed jointly by the Ermakov accumulation and the diagonal spin-orbital rotation. The resulting framework provides a direct way to quantify spin-orbit mixing of twisted electrons in realistic magnetic lenses and solenoidal beam-line elements, and it identifies a route toward controlled spin-OAM conversion in engineered sequences of magnetic-field edges.