Elastic scattering of Airy electron packets on atoms

TL;DR

This paper investigates how Airy electron beams scatter elastically off atoms, revealing azimuthal asymmetries in scattering patterns that depend on the precise positioning of the atom relative to the beam's minima.

Contribution

It introduces the analysis of azimuthal asymmetry in elastic scattering of Airy electron beams and examines the effects of positional uncertainty on observable patterns.

Findings

Azimuthal asymmetry depends on atom position relative to beam minima.

Uncertainty in atom position affects the visibility of asymmetry.

Larger targets diminish the observable azimuthal asymmetry.

Abstract

The problem of elastic scattering of electron Airy beams on potential fields is considered for a hydrogen atom in the ground state and for Yukawa potential. It is demonstrated that the angular dependence of the scattering probability density is in general azimuthally asymmetric. When the position of the atom happens to coincide with one the minima of the probability density of the Airy beam the asymmetric pattern is represented by four separated peaks. We show that this behaviour is very sensitive to the precision with which the relative position of the atom and the minima is defined and study how uncertainty in the position measured in terms of the transverse size of the wave-packet affects observation of azimuthal asymmetry. Finally, we consider a spatially localized target and discuss the difficulties of observing the azimuthal asymmetry for targets with sizes that exceed the critical value determined by the beam parameters and the position of the target center.