Coherent atom beam diffraction

H.J. Beier

Sobia Asghar, Ziauddin Ziauddin, Shahid Qamar +1 more

The role of spatial coherence on diffraction intensity is investigated for a partially coherent incident Gaussian Schell-model beam which is diffracted from a two-level atomic grating. It is shown that the performance of the atomic grating is greatly influenced by the spectral coherence width of the partially coherent fields. It is observed that relatively large intensity of the diffracted light can be obtained via spatial coherence, beam width, interaction length, and mode index of partially coherent incident light. The scheme provides possibilities for the potential applications of atomic grating in lensless imaging using the partially coherent light field.

Silvânia A. Carvalho, Luı́s E. E. de Araujo

We describe theoretically an atomic diffraction grating that combines an electromagnetically induced grating with a coherence grating in a double-$\ensuremath{\Lambda}$ atomic system. With the atom in a condition of maximal coherence between its lower levels, the combined gratings simultaneously diffract both the incident probe beam as well as the signal beam generated through four-wave mixing. A special feature of the atomic grating is that it will diffract any beam resonantly tuned to any excited state of the atom accessible by a dipole transition from its ground state.

David W. Keith, Mark L. Schattenburg, Henry I. Smith +1 more

We have demonstrated a novel diffraction grating for atoms. A collimated beam of sodium atoms with a de Broglie wavelength of 17 pm was diffracted by transmission through an array of slits with a spatial period of 0.2 \ensuremath{\mu}m formed in a gold membrane. This is the first reported diffraction of atoms by a fabricated periodic structure. Our transmission grating for atoms can divide or recombine an atomic beam coherently, and may provide the easiest route to the realization of an atom wave interferometer.

J. Seifert, J. Lienemann, Andreas Schüller +1 more