近日，德国康斯坦茨大学的Peter Baum及其研究团队取得一项新进展。经过不懈努力，他们对具有手性质量和电荷的结构化电子进行研究。相关研究成果已于2024年7月12日在国际权威学术期刊《科学》上发表。

在这项研究中，研究人员证明了自由电子可以通过激光的场循环转化为具有质量和电荷的右手或左手线圈。与相涡旋光束相比，该研究中的电子保持了平坦的德布罗意波，但它们的手性是通过其在空间和时间上的期望值形状来获得的。

研究人员通过阿秒门控测量波函数密度，揭示了具有左手或右手螺距的线圈以及双线圈的三维形状。具有此类或相关手性几何形状的工程基本粒子，有望在手性传感、自由电子量子光学、粒子物理学或电子显微镜等领域得到应用。

据悉，手性是一种在基础物理、材料科学、化学、光学和光谱学中广泛存在的现象。

附：英文原文

Title: Structured electrons with chiral mass and charge

Author: Yiqi Fang, Joel Kuttruff, David Nabben, Peter Baum

Issue&Volume: 2024-07-12

Abstract: Chirality is a phenomenon with widespread relevance in fundamental physics, material science, chemistry, optics, and spectroscopy. In this work, we show that a free electron can be converted by the field cycles of laser light into a right-handed or left-handed coil of mass and charge. In contrast to phase-vortex beams, our electrons maintained a flat de Broglie wave but obtained their chirality from the shape of their expectation value in space and time. Measurements of wave function densities by attosecond gating revealed the three-dimensional shape of coils and double coils with left-handed or right-handed pitch. Engineered elementary particles with such or related chiral geometries should be useful for applications in chiral sensing, free-electron quantum optics, particle physics or electron microscopy.

DOI: 10.1126/science.adp9143

Source: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adp9143