Vortex-Enhanced Zitterbewegung in Relativistic Electron Wave Packets
Abstract
Zitterbewegung (ZBW), the trembling motion predicted by the Dirac equation, has long remained unobservable in free electrons due to its sub-Compton scale. We elaborately construct a relativistic vortex electron wave packet as a coherent superposition of both positive- and negative-energy Dirac states and derive their space-time dynamics. Our analysis demonstrates that introducing orbital angular momentum provides a mechanism for amplifying the ZBW amplitude far beyond that of conventional Gaussian packets, while maintaining coherence. The resulting relativistic vortex states unify Gaussian and Bessel-Gaussian models within a single framework and opens new possibilities for observing relativistic quantum dynamics in structured electron wave packets.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2511.21142,
title = {Vortex-Enhanced Zitterbewegung in Relativistic Electron Wave Packets},
author = {Zhongze Guo and Bei Xu and Qiang Gu},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2511.21142},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
5 pages, no figures