Relativistic Stern-Gerlach Deflection: Hamiltonian Formulation

A Hamiltonian formalism is employed to elucidate the effects of the Stern-Gerlach force on beams of relativistic spin-polarized particles, for passage through a localized region with a static magnetic or electric field gradient. The problem of the spin-orbit coupling for nonrelativistic bounded motion in a central potential (hydrogen-like atoms, in particular) is also briefly studied.