QUANTUM MECHANICS OF DIRAC PARTICLE BEAM OPTICS: SINGLE-PARTICLE THEORY

Abstract

It has been found that quantum corrections can substantially affect the classical results of tracking for trajectories close to the separatrix. Hence the development of a basic formalism for obtaining the quantum maps for any particle beam optical system is called for. To this end, it is observed that several aspects of quantum maps for the beam optics of spin-1/2 particles can be studied, at the level of single particle dynamics, using the proper formalism based on the Dirac equation.