Electron Beams Whip Up A Quantum Tornado
A group of researchers have developed what are known as vortex beams - rotating electron beams - which make it possible to investigate the magnetic properties of materials and in the future it may be possible to manipulate the tiniest components in a targeted manner and set them in rotation also. Electron beams have been used to analyze materials for a while, such as in electron microscopes. For the most part, the beams' rotation does not affect this analysis because in classical physics, an electron current in a vacuum does not have any orbital angular momentum. But in quantum mechanics, the electrons must be envisaged as a wavelike current, which can rotate as a whole about its propagation direction, similar to the air flow in a tornado. read more