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The Mott scattering of high-energetic twisted electrons by atoms is investigated within the framework of the first Born approximation and Dirac's relativistic equation. Special emphasis is placed on the angular distribution and longitudinal polarization of the scattered electrons. In order to evaluate these angular and polarization properties we consider two experimental setups in which the twisted electron beam collides with either a single well-localized atom or macroscopic atomic target. Detailed relativistic calculations have been performed for both setups and for the electrons with kinetic energy from 10 to 1000 keV. The results of these calculations indicate that the emission pattern and polarization of outgoing electrons differ significantly from the scattering of plane-wave electrons and can be very sensitive to the parameters of the incident twisted beam. In particular, it is shown that the angular- and polarization-sensitive Mott measurements may reveal valuable information about both the transverse and longitudinal components of the linear momentum and the projection of the total angular momentum of twisted electron states. Thus, the Mott scattering emerges as a diagnostic tool for the relativistic vortex beams.

Vortex electrons, - freely propagating electrons whose wavefunction has helical wavefronts, - could become a novel tool in the physics of electromagnetic radiation. They carry a non-zero intrinsic orbital angular momentum (OAM) $\ell$ with respect to the propagation axis and, for \ell \gg 1, a large OAM-induced magnetic moment, \mu ~ \ell \mu_B (\mu_B is the Bohr magneton), which influences the radiation of electromagnetic waves. Here, we consider in detail the OAM-induced effects by such electrons in two forms of polarization radiation, namely in Cherenkov radiation and transition radiation. Thanks to the large \ell, we can neglect quantum or spin-induced effects, which are of the order of \hbar \omega/E_e \ll 1, but retain the magnetic moment contribution \ell \hbar \omega/E_e \lesssim 1, which makes the quasiclassical approach to polarization radiation applicable. We discuss the magnetic moment contribution to polarization radiation, which has never been experimentally observed, and study how its visibility depends on the kinematical parameters and the medium permittivity. In particular, it is shown that this contribution can, in principle, be detected in azimuthally non-symmetrical problems, for example when vortex electrons obliquely cross a metallic screen (transition radiation) or move nearby it (diffraction radiation). We predict a left-right angular asymmetry of the transition radiation (in the plane where the charge radiation distributions would stay symmetric), which appears due to an effective interference between the charge radiation field and the magnetic moment one. Numerical values of this asymmetry for vortex electrons with E_e = 300keV and \ell = O(100-1000) are O(0.1-1%), and we argue that this effect could be detected with existing technology. The finite conductivity of the target and frequency dispersion play the crucial roles in these predictions., Comment: v2: 20 pages, 10 figures, 1 table; additional figure, table, explanations, and various text improvements, results unchanged

Accurate knowledge of the intensity of focused ultrashort laser pulses is crucial to the correct interpretation of experimental results in strong-field physics. We have developed a technique to measure laser intensities approaching ${10}^{15}\phantom{\rule{0.28em}{0ex}}\text{W}/{\text{cm}}^{2}$ with an accuracy of 1$%$. This accuracy is achieved by comparing experimental photoelectron yields from atomic hydrogen with predictions from exact numerical solutions of the three-dimensional time-dependent Schr\"odinger equation. Our method can be extended to relativistic intensities and to the use of other atomic species.

High-energy photons and other particles carrying nonzero orbital angular momentum (OAM) emerge as a new tool in high-energy physics. Recently, it was suggested to generate high-energy photons with nonzero OAM (twisted photons) by the Compton backscattering of twisted optical photons on relativistic electron beams. Twisted electrons in the intermediate energy range have also been demonstrated experimentally; twisted protons and other particles can, in principle, be created in a similar way. Collisions of energetic twisted states can offer a new look at particle properties and interactions. A theoretical description of twisted particle scattering developed previously treated them as pure Bessel states and ran into difficulty when describing the OAM of the final twisted particle at nonzero scattering angles. Here we develop further this formalism by incorporating two additional important features. First, we treat the initial OAM state as a wave packet of a finite transverse size rather than a pure Bessel state. This realistic assumption allows us to resolve the existing controversy between two theoretical analyses for nonforward scattering. Second, we describe the final twisted particle in terms of the orbital helicity: the OAM projection on its average direction of propagation rather than on the fixed reaction axis. Using this formalism, we determine to what extent the twisted state is transferred from the initial to final OAM particle in a generic scattering kinematics. As a particular application, we prove that in the Compton backscattering the orbital helicity of the final photon stays close to the OAM projection of the initial photon.