Abstract
We report on the diffraction of metastable helium atoms (de Broglie wavelength λ dB ≊ 1Å) passing a free-standing gold grating with a periodicity of 0.5 μm. The observed positions and intensities of the different diffraction peaks are in good agreement with a theoretical model for the grating shape. The overall transmission of the grating for the excited state atoms is about 30%, mainly determined by the grating geometry. Our result indicates that microfabricated transmission gratings can be used as efficient and coherent beam splitters for rare gas atoms in long-lived excited states. This fact offers interesting possibilities in view of atom interferometry with metastable noble gas atoms.
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See, e.g., G. Badurek, H. Rauch, A. Zeilinger (eds.): Proc. Int'l Workshop on Matter Wave Interferometry, Vienna 1987. Physica B 151 (1988)
O. Carnal, J. Mlynek: Phys. Rev. Lett. 66, 2689 (1991)
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The reflection of metastable noble gas atoms from corrugated surfaces has been investigated by: H. Conrad, G. Ertl, J. Küppers, W. Sesselmann, B. Woratschek, H. Haberland: Surf. Sci. 11, 98 (1982). Their studies have shown a large amount of de-excitation of the metastable atoms into the ground state
For further details, see O. Carnal: Dissertation, ETH (1991) in preparation
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The spectral brightness B is defined as particles sr−1 time−1 area−1 v/Δv
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The grating was manufactured by Heidenhain, Traunreut, Germany, with the photolithographic technique “DIAGRID”
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In fact we are not exactly in the Fraunhofer regime. Numerical calculations have shown, however, that the diffraction pattern can be approximated very accurately by a Fourier integral of the grating transmission function, at least as far as information about the intensity distribution is concerned
A. Anderson, S. Haroche, E.A. Hinds, W. Jhe, D. Meschede: Phys. Rev. A 37, 3594 (1988)