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Physics Today

De Broglie’s meter stick: Making measurements with matter waves

Markus Arndt

Published May 1, 2014• 19 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Interfering atoms and molecules serve as exquisite rulers that sharpen our knowledge of physical laws, measure tiny forces, and reveal subtle properties of matter.
DOI
10.1063/pt.3.2381

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Einstein's relativity (SRT) [1], raised an important question: Do its laws apply to matter/energy or to the frame of reference containing it. In other words, is SRT a property characterizing matter/energy or is it an imposed dynamics as expressed by the Lorentz Transformation (LT). This article examines the subtle difference between the two. It proves that matter/energy is the fundamental reality, while the reference frame, although it exists, exerts no force. Therefore, we can start from Newton's second law (NSL) to rebuild SRT [2]. This will allow us to derive the de Broglie relations from NSL while circumventing the well-known contradictions between SRT and de Broglie's quantum wave theory.
Since de Broglie's work on the wave nature of particles, various optical phenomena have been observed with matter waves of atoms and molecules. However, the analogy between classical and atom/molecule optics is not exact because of different dispersion relations. In addition, according to de Broglie's formula, different combinations of particle mass and velocity can give the same de Broglie wavelength. As a result, even for identical wavelengths, different molecular properties such as electric polarizabilities, Casimir-Polder forces, and dissociation energies modify (and potentially suppress) the resulting matter-wave optical phenomena such as diffraction intensities or interference effects. We report on the universal behavior observed in matter-wave diffraction of He atoms and He2 and D2 molecules from a ruled grating. Clear evidence for emerging beam resonances is observed in the diffraction patterns, which are quantitatively the same for all three particles and only depend on the de Broglie wavelength. A model, combining secondary scattering and quantum reflection, permits us to trace the observed universal behavior back to the peculiar principles of quantum reflection.