Standing Wave Interferometry.

Bernd Rohwedder

Peter Hawkes, Erwin K. Kasper

Pierre Vidil, Bénoît Chalopin

We demonstrate the possibility to produce a blazed grating for electron waves using Kapitza-Dirac diffraction on a standing wave created by several harmonics of a fundamental wavelength. We show that an optimized multicolor standing wave can lead to strongly asymmetric diffraction patterns. Using a bichromatic standing wave, we predict a diffraction probability larger than 50% in a specific order. This order can be chosen with the spatial relative phase between the fundamental and second harmonic. Since the Kapitza-Dirac diffraction grating is experimentally more feasible than Bragg diffraction, this could be an interesting alternative to be used in electron interferometry.

Lawrence N. Mertz

Y. B. Band

I propose a coherent atomic-beam splitter that can be used for atom interferometry. Chirped adiabatic passage between states of the atoms of the atomic beam is employed as they pass through a standing-wave radiation field to split coherently the atomic beam.