The classical dynamics for a charged spin particle is governed by the Lorentz force equation for orbital motion and by the Thomas-Bargmann-Michel-Telegdi (T-BMT) equation for spin precession. In static and homogeneous electromagnetic fields, it has been shown that the Foldy-Wouthuysen (FW) transform of the Dirac-Pauli Hamiltonian, which describes the relativistic quantum theory for a spin-$1/2$ particle, is consistent with the classical Hamiltonian (with both the orbital and spin parts) up to the order of $1/m^{14}$ ($m$ is the particle's mass) in the low-energy and weak-field limit. In this paper, we extend this correspondence to the case of inhomogeneous fields. Regardless of the field gradient (e.g. Stern-Gerlach) force, the T-BMT equation is unaltered and thus the classical Hamiltonian remains the same, but subtleties arise and need to be clarified. For the relativistic quantum theory, we apply Eriksen's method to obtain the exact FW transformations for the two special cases, which in conjunction strongly suggest that, in the weak-field limit, the FW transformed Dirac-Pauli Hamiltonian (except for the Darwin term) is in agreement with the classical Hamiltonian in a manner that classical variables correspond to quantum operators via a specific Weyl ordering. Meanwhile, the Darwin term is shown to have no classical correspondence.

• Received 3 November 2013

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.89.032111