Photon vortex generation from nonlinear Compton scattering in Feynman approach

Abstract

In the present study, we show calculation of nonlinear Compton scattering with circularly polarized photons in a cylindrical coordinate using Feynman diagram to calculate photon vortex generation in intermediate states considering conservation of angular momentum. We take two different vortex wave functions based on Bessel function for the emitted photon and the electron after emission of the photon, which are the eigenstate of z component of the total angular momentum (zTAM) when a particle propagates along z axis. The result shows that when an electron absorbs N photons a photon vortex with a zTAM = N is predominantly radiated, but there are still very small contributions of photons with a zTAM = (N-1) and (N +1) due to the spin flip of the initial electron. This means even when an electron absorbs only a single photon, the electron may emit a photon vortex of a zTAM of 2 h-bar. However, the numerical calculations show that the contribution of the spin flip is four orders of magnitude smaller than that of the dominant radiation. We also discuss the circular polarization for the generated photon vortices.