Is magnetic chiral dichroism feasible with electron vortices?

Abstract: We discuss the feasibility of detecting magnetic transitions with focused electron vortex probes, suggested by selection rules for the magnetic quantum number. We theoretically estimate the dichroic signal strength in the L2,3 edge of ferromagnetic d metals. It is shown that under realistic conditions, the dichroic signal is undetectable for nanoparticles larger than . This is confirmed by a key experiment with nanometer-sized vortices. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]