Quantum Mechanics of Charged Particle Beam Optics : Understanding Devices from Electron Microscopes to Particle Accelerators

Classical Charged Particle Beam Optics used in the design and operation of all present-day charged particle beam devices, from low energy electron microscopes to high energy particle accelerators, is entirely based on classical mechanics. A question of curiosity is: How is classical charged particle beam optics so successful in practice though the particles of the beam, like electrons, are quantum mechanical? Quantum Mechanics of Charged Particle Beam Optics answers this question with a comprehensive formulation of ‘Quantum Charged Particle Beam Optics’ applicable to any charged particle beam device.

Professor Ramaswamy Jagannathan retired in 2009 as a senior professor of physics from The Institute of Mathematical Sciences (IMSc), Chennai, India. He is currently an adjunct professor of physics at the Chennai Mathematical Institute (CMI), Chennai. He got his PhD (Theor. Phys.) from the University of Madras, Chennai, India, in 1976, working at IMSc. His PhD work on generalized Clifford algebras was done under the guidance of Professor Alladi Ramakrishnan, the founder director of IMSc known popularly as MATSCIENCE at that time. He has authored/coauthored about 80 research papers in various branches of Physical Mathematics, like Generalized Clifford Algebras and Their Physical Applications, Finite-Dimensional Quantum Mechanics, Applications of Classical Groups, Quantum Groups, Nonlinear Dynamics, Deformed Special Functions, and Quantum Theory of Charged Particle Beam Optics with Applications to Electron Microscopy and Accelerator Optics. In particular, his paper with Professors R. Simon, E. C. G. Sudarshan, and N. Mukunda (1989) on the quantum theory of magnetic electron lenses based on the Dirac equation initiated a systematic study of the Quantum Theory of Charged Particle Beam Optics. This theory was subsequently developed vastly by him and his collaborators (in particular, his PhD student Dr Sameen Ahmed Khan).

Dr Sameen Ahmed Khan is an associate professor at the Department of Mathematics and Sciences, College of Arts and Applied Sciences, Dhofar University, Salalah, Sultanate of Oman (http://du.edu.om/). He got his PhD (Theor. Phys.) at the University of Madras, Chennai, India, in 1997. His PhD thesis, done at The Institute of Mathematical Sciences (IMSc), Chennai, under the supervision of Professor Ramaswamy Jagannathan, was on the quantum theory of charged particle beam optics. He did postdoctoral research at INFN, Padova, Italy, and Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, Cuernavaca, Mexico. He has 16 years of teaching experience in Oman. He has developed a unified treatment of light beam optics and light polarization using quantum methodologies. This formalism describes the beam optics and light polarization from a parent Hamiltonian which is exact and derived from Maxwell’s equations. He has authored three books, fifteen book chapters, and about 75 technical publications in journals and proceedings of repute. He has more than 250 publications on science popularization. Dr Sameen is one of the founding members of the Ibn al Haytham LHiSA Light: History, Science, and Applications (LHiSA) International Society set up during the International Year of Light and Light-based Technologies. He is a signatory to six of the reports on the upcoming International Linear Collider.