Magnetically assisted spin-resolved electron diffraction: Coherent control of spin population and spatial filtering

TL;DR

This paper develops a theoretical framework to control and analyze electron spin in nanograting diffraction experiments using magnetic fields, enabling coherent spin manipulation and spatial filtering of free electron beams.

Contribution

It introduces a self-consistent Maxwell-Pauli model for spin-resolved electron diffraction, demonstrating magnetic control of spin without disrupting diffraction coherence.

Findings

Intrinsic magnetic self-fields are too weak to cause spin mixing.

Uniform magnetic fields enable controlled spin rotation via Larmor precession.

Spatially varying magnetic fields produce spin-dependent momentum shifts.

Abstract

Electron diffraction from nanogratings provides a platform for free-electron interferometry, yet controlled manipulation of electron spin in such geometries remains largely unexplored. In particular, the role of the self-generated magnetic field arising from electron motion and the feasibility of coherent spin control without disrupting diffraction coherence have not been quantitatively investigated. In this article, a self-consistent Maxwell-Pauli framework is developed to study spin-resolved electron diffraction from nanogratings in the presence of magnetic fields. The model incorporates geometric confinement, image-charge interactions, self-generated magnetostatic fields, and externally applied magnetic fields. Numerical simulations show that the intrinsic magnetic self-field produced by the electron probability current is several orders of magnitude too weak to induce measurable spin mixing, demonstrating that nanogratings act as spin-conserving beam splitters under field-free conditions. When a uniform magnetic field is applied upstream of the nanograting, coherent Larmor precession enables controlled spin rotation without modifying the diffraction geometry or degrading coherence. The magnetic field required for a $\pi$ spin rotation scales inversely with the interaction length and electron de Broglie wavelength $\lambda_{dB}$. Furthermore, a downstream nonuniform magnetic field applied after the nanograting imparts a spatially varying Zeeman phase, producing opposite transverse momentum shifts for the two spin components. The spin-dependent transverse dynamics is analyzed using Husimi Q-function phase-space maps, which visualize spin-dependent population redistribution and momentum separation. The proposed approach enables tunable spatial separation of spin-resolved free electron beams and establishes an all-magnetic route for coherent spin rotation, control, and interferometry.