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arXiv:1203.3858 · Laser Physics

Talbot effect with matter waves

Farhan Saif

Published Nov 29, 2012• 7 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Talbot effect in the space-time evolution of matter waves is analyzed and shown that the matter waves at relativistic and non-relativistic velocities exhibit coherence beyond the grating and display Talbot self-imaging. The grating is realized by considering equidistant narrowly peaked coherent probability distributions at the onset. Theoretical frame work is based on a quantum particle at relativistic and non-relativistic velocities in a one dimensional box. The matter waves, in their evolution, display Talbot self-imaging and fractional self-imaging as restructuring, respectively, at Talbot length and fractional Talbot lengths.

DOI
10.1134/s1054660x12120079

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Talbot effect in the space-time evolution of matter waves is analyzed and shown that the matter waves at relativistic and non-relativistic velocities exhibit coherence beyond the grating and display Talbot self-imaging. The grating is realized by considering equidistant narrowly peaked coherent probability distributions at the onset. Theoretical frame work is based on a quantum particle at relativistic and non-relativistic velocities in a one dimensional box. The matter waves, in their evolution, display Talbot self-imaging and fractional self-imaging as restructuring, respectively, at Talbot length and fractional Talbot lengths.
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Summary form only given.Recent developments in atom optics have led to different approaches to lithographic techniques with neutral atoms. One of these is the use of diffraction from free-standing masks, which is sometimes called atom holography. There, narrow structures arise due to matter-wave interference in the Fresnel regime. In the presented experiment, we demonstrate that the wave nature of atoms can be used to produce periodic structures with small periodicities. We used the Talbot effect in the Fresnel diffraction regime behind a microfabricated transmission grating. The Talbot effect is the self-imaging of a grating of periodicity d illuminated with plane coherent waves.
Weyl functions conveniently describe the evolution of wave coherences in periodic or quadratic potentials. In this work we use Weyl functions to study the ``Talbot-Lau effect'' in a time-domain matter-wave interferometer. A ``displacement diagram'' is introduced to analyze and calculate the matter-wave interference for an atomic cloud in a quadratic potential that interacts with a sequence of short optical standing wave pulses producing an atomic grating echo. Unlike previous treatments, this new approach allows the atomic ensemble to have an arbitrary initial phase-space distribution, and the standing wave grating vectors to span three dimensions. Several examples are discussed to illustrate the convenience of the diagrammatic technique including the following: a two-dimensional Talbot-Lau effect, the shift in the echo time and the recoil phase for the interferometer perturbed by a quadratic potential; and the realization of a time-domain ``Lau effect'' using a pulsed harmonic potential. The diagrammatic technique is applicable to diffraction gratings with arbitrary grating transmission functions. We conclude the paper with a general discussion on the Weyl function representations of matter-wave coherence, and relate the conservation of matter-wave coherence with the conservation of purity that distinguishes decoherence effects from dephasing effects.
We analyze and experimentally demonstrate a new (temporal) Talbot effect, where a pulsed phase grating is applied to a cloud of cold atoms (Bose-Einstein condensate). In contrast to the usual (spatial) Talbot effect, our atoms gain kinetic energy when diffracted by the pulsed grating. The energy gain and the matter-wave-dispersion relation result in an exact (no paraxial approximation) Talbot effect where the initial wave front is reconstructed at multiples of a ``Talbot time'' TT{T}_{\mathrm{T}}TT​. We demonstrate the Talbot effect by applying a second pulsed phase grating after a variable delay. When this second grating is applied at even (odd) multiples of TT/2{T}_{\mathrm{T}}/2TT​/2, it doubles (cancels) the effect of the first pulsed grating.