Exact Electron Dynamics in Linear and Chiral Cavities: Complete Field versus Single-Helicity Reduction

Abstract:Can a chiral cavity turn a free electron into a Landau-like orbiting particle? We answer with exact solutions of three quadratic electron--cavity models in the dipole limit, valid at arbitrary coupling. A single linearly polarized mode dresses the electron mass, which delays its flight, slows the spreading of a wavepacket and entangles the packet with the cavity. The complete transverse field, with both circular helicities, keeps two commuting, gapless translations at any coupling, mode number and helicity splitting, so the electron stays ballistic and no synthetic magnetic field appears. Keeping a single helicity gives two inequivalent models that are not related by a gauge transformation: reducing before the Power--Zienau--Woolley transformation gives ballistic motion, whereas reducing after it gives a Landau-like crossed-quadrature Hamiltonian. They differ by a real uniform field $B=s\lambda^2/(2\omega_c)$ ($\omega_c$ the mode frequency, $\lambda$ the coupling, $s=\pm1$ the helicity). In the complete theory the frequency $\omega_{-s}$ of the partner helicity, measured against $g^2=\lambda^2/(2\omega_c)$, decides between them: the electron is ballistic for a stiff partner, and Landau-like only at the soft-partner point, through an exact canonical reorganization that holds for the active sector but not for observables such as the electron--photon entanglement. Projecting onto one helicity after the PZW transformation is therefore not by itself a mechanism for synthetic magnetism; the mode content of the cavity is.

Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el); Chemical Physics (physics.chem-ph); Quantum Physics (quant-ph)

arXiv:2610.40986 [cond-mat.str-el]

(or arXiv:2610.40986v1 [cond-mat.str-el] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2610.40986 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)

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