Electron-spin filter and polarizer in a standing light wave

We demonstrate the theoretical feasibility of spin-dependent diffraction and spin polarization of an electron in two counterpropagating, circularly polarized laser beams. The spin dynamics appears in a two-photon process of the Kapitza-Dirac effect in the Bragg regime. We show the spin dependence of the diffraction process by comparison of the time evolution of spin-up and spin-down electrons in a relativistic quantum simulation. We further discuss the spin properties of the scattering by studying an analytically approximated solution of the time-evolution matrix. A classification scheme in terms of unitary or nonunitary propagation matrices is used for establishing a generalized and spin-independent description of the spin properties in the diffraction process.