Breit interaction in elastic scattering of vortex electron on Hydrogen atomic target

Abstract

The interaction of electron vortex beams with atoms is fundamental to their applications, yet existing studies on elastic scattering have considered only the Coulomb interaction. The role of the Breit interaction, which represents the leading relativistic correction to the Coulomb potential between two electrons, has not been systematically examined. We study the elastic scattering of a \(300\) keV vortex electron by a hydrogen atomic target, with emphasis on the role of the Breit interaction. Comparisons are made between the pure Coulomb contribution and the sum of the Coulomb and Breit contributions. Our results show that the Breit interaction dominates the scattering process in certain kinematic regions when the total angular momentum (TAM) of the vortex electron is sufficiently large, which breaks with the conventional notion that the Breit interaction has little contribution to electron scattering for low-\(Z\) atoms. This phenomenon arises primarily because a vortex electron with large angular momentum possesses a substantial magnetic moment, and the Breit interaction precisely describes the interaction between magnetic moments. We further compare single-atom, mesoscopic, and macroscopic target cases, and show that the target size significantly influences the observability of the Breit-induced effects, with a smaller target size being favorable for observing this phenomenon.