Imaging the dynamics of free-electron Landau states

P. Schattschneider (), Th. Schachinger, M. Stöger-Pollach, S. Löffler, A. Steiger-Thirsfeld, K. Y. Bliokh () and Franco Nori ()
Additional contact information
P. Schattschneider: Institute of Solid State Physics, Vienna University of Technology
Th. Schachinger: Institute of Solid State Physics, Vienna University of Technology
M. Stöger-Pollach: University Service Centre for Electron Microscopy, Vienna University of Technology
S. Löffler: University Service Centre for Electron Microscopy, Vienna University of Technology
A. Steiger-Thirsfeld: University Service Centre for Electron Microscopy, Vienna University of Technology
K. Y. Bliokh: iTHES Research Group, RIKEN
Franco Nori: Center for Emergent Matter Science, RIKEN

Nature Communications, 2014, vol. 5, issue 1, 1-6

Abstract: Abstract Landau levels and states of electrons in a magnetic field are fundamental quantum entities underlying the quantum Hall and related effects in condensed matter physics. However, the real-space properties and observation of Landau wave functions remain elusive. Here we report the real-space observation of Landau states and the internal rotational dynamics of free electrons. States with different quantum numbers are produced using nanometre-sized electron vortex beams, with a radius chosen to match the waist of the Landau states, in a quasi-uniform magnetic field. Scanning the beams along the propagation direction, we reconstruct the rotational dynamics of the Landau wave functions with angular frequency ~100 GHz. We observe that Landau modes with different azimuthal quantum numbers belong to three classes, which are characterized by rotations with zero, Larmor and cyclotron frequencies, respectively. This is in sharp contrast to the uniform cyclotron rotation of classical electrons, and in perfect agreement with recent theoretical predictions.

Date: 2014
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms5586 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:5:y:2014:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms5586

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms5586

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().