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A scalable optical detection scheme for matter wave interferometry

Stibor, A, Stefanov, A, Fabienne Goldfarb, Elisabeth Reiger, Markus Arndt

Published Jan 3, 2006• 3 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

Imaging of surface adsorbed molecules is investigated as a novel detection method for matter wave interferometry with fluorescent particles. Mechanically magnified fluorescence imaging turns out to be an excellent tool for recording quantum interference patterns. It has a good sensitivity and yields patterns of high visibility. The spatial resolution of this technique is only determined by the Talbot gratings and can exceed the optical resolution limit by an order of magnitude. A unique advantage of this approach is its scalability: for certain classes of nano-sized objects, the detection sensitivity will even increase significantly with increasing size of the particle.

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Imaging of surface adsorbed molecules is investigated as a novel detection method for matter wave interferometry with fluorescent particles. Mechanically magnified fluorescence imaging turns out to be an excellent tool for recording quantum interference patterns. It has a good sensitivity and yields patterns of high visibility. The spatial resolution of this technique is only determined by the Talbot gratings and can exceed the optical resolution limit by an order of magnitude. A unique advantage of this approach is its scalability: for certain classes of nano-sized objects, the detection sensitivity will even increase significantly with increasing size of the particle.
Imaging of surface adsorbed molecules is investigated as a novel detection method for matter wave interferometry with fluorescent particles. Mechanically magnified fluorescence imaging turns out to be an excellent tool for recording quantum interference patterns. It has a good sensitivity and yields patterns of high visibility. The spatial resolution of this technique is only determined by the Talbot gratings and can exceed the optical resolution limit by an order of magnitude. A unique advantage of this approach is its scalability: for certain classes of nano-sized objects, the detection sensitivity will even increase significantly with increasing size of the particle.
Matter-wave interferometry with large molecules is partially limited by the inefficiency of the commonly used ionization detection schemes. Here we discuss the possibility of employing a surface imaging method in which molecular interferograms with periods in the micron range are adsorbed on a surface and subsequently read using fluorescence microscopy. Our preliminary experiments show that the detection efficiency can be significantly increased compared to electron impact ionization and quadrupole mass spectrometry. However the interpretation of fluorescent molecular patterns requires a good understanding and control of the molecular mobility, the bleaching behavior, and the coverage dependence of the fluorescence intensity.
Three different fluorescence detection methods for matter interferometry are explored in the paper. Firstly, molecules can be detected in free flight, when the dilute particle beam is excited by intense laser light. The emitted fluorescent light is collected by a sensitive CCD camera. Secondly, for molecules up to about 1000 amu the molecular interference pattern, with a fringe period of about 1/spl mu/m, can be directly adsorbed on a surface and read out using high-resolution fluorescence microscopy. A third and novel detection scheme combines the high spatial resolution of Talbot Lau interferometry with the high detection efficiency of surface adsorbed fluorophores.
The wave-particle duality of massive objects is a cornerstone of quantum physics and a key property of many modern tools such as electron microscopy, neutron diffraction or atom interferometry. Here we report on the first experimental demonstration of quantum interference lithography with complex molecules. Molecular matter-wave interference patterns are deposited onto a reconstructed Si(111) 7x7 surface and imaged using scanning tunneling microscopy. Thereby both the particle and the quantum wave character of the molecules can be visualized in one and the same image. This new approach to nanolithography therefore also represents a sensitive new detection scheme for quantum interference experiments.
We discuss modern developments in quantum optics with organic molecules, clusters and nanoparticles -- in particular recent realizations of near-field matter-wave interferometry. A unified theoretical description in phase space allows us to describe quantum interferometry in position space and in the time domain on an equal footing. In order to establish matter-wave interferometers as a universal tool, which can accept and address a variety of nanoparticles, we elaborate on new quantum optical elements, such as diffraction gratings made of matter and light, as well as their absorptive and dispersive interaction with complex materials. We present Talbot-Lau interferometry (TLI), the Kapitza-Dirac-Talbot-Lau interferometer (KDTLI) and interferometry with pulsed optical gratings (OTIMA) as the most advanced devices to study the quantum wave nature of composite matter. These experiments define the current mass and complexity record in interferometric explorations of quantum macroscopicity and they open new avenues to quantum assisted metrology with applications in physical chemistry and biomolecular physics.