Interferometry Using Wave Packets

S. B. Cahn

Thierry Ruchon, Thomas Remetter, P. Johnsson +4 more

We analyse recent experiments on momentum shearing interferometry of electron wave packets by using an optical analogy with shearing interferometry for optical waves. This analogy offers a convenient point of view to discuss the capabilities and difficulties of this technique used to access the phase of electron wave packets.

K. Klünder, P. Johnsson, Marko Swoboda +6 more

We present a method for performing quantum state holography, with which we completely characterize the amplitude and phase of an attosecond electron wave packet. Our approach is an extension of a recent publication [J. Mauritsson et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 053001 (2010)] in which we demonstrated experimentally that the energies and amplitudes of an attosecond electron wave packet can be characterized using attosecond electron interferometry. Here we show theoretically that attosecond electron interferometry can be extended to retrieve the phases of all the states that make up the wave packet. We demonstrate the feasibility of our method by analyzing a wave packet created by a shake-up process. We show that our method can successfully retrieve arbitrary phases and/or lifetimes added to the component eigenstates.

Zsolt Papp, Péter Várlaki, László Nádai

James R. Kellogg, Nan Yu, James M. Kohel +3 more

We give experimental evidence to confirm that the coherence length of a cold atomic wave packet remains constant while the packet's overall physical size increases in time. Doppler sensitive atom interferometry allows for atoms to be prepared in a regime where de Broglie wavelengths are much more comparable to coherence lengths than in a thermal regime. Atomic wave packet interactions are a function of coherence length which is determined by the initial velocity spread of the atom wave.

Harold Aspden