We have studied suboptical wavelength atomic gratings, generated by the interference of atomic de Broglie waves in a time-domain interferometer. Three short optical standing- wave pulses, detuned from resonance with a cloud of approximately 100 (mu) K⁸⁵ Rb atoms, act as phase gratings for atomic matter waves. The first two standing- wave pulses, separated by time T, produce a sequence of atomic density gratings of periods $lamda/4 at time 1.5T after the first pulse. The dependence of our signals on the time separation of the pulses is in good agreement with our theoretical predictions. As far as we know, this is the first time when the formation of a high order matter-wave diffraction grating was observed in real time. This demonstrated ability to produce sub-wavelength structures makes our techniques applicable to atomic beam lithography.

Date Published: 25 February 1999
PDF: 12 pages
Proc. SPIE 3736, ICONO '98: Quantum Optics, Interference Phenomena in Atomic Systems, and High-Precision Measurements, (25 February 1999); doi: 10.1117/12.340124

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 3736:
ICONO '98: Quantum Optics, Interference Phenomena in Atomic Systems, and High-Precision Measurements
Anatoli V. Andreev; Sergei N. Bagayev; Anatoliy S. Chirkin; Vladimir I. Denisov, Editor(s)