Abstract

In 1989 Hajnal and Opat [1] suggested the use of an evanescent standing wave to diffract atomic de Broglie waves. Preliminary experiments [2] showed reflection of Sodium atoms travelling at ≈800m/s from an evanescent light wave up to a few milliradians but were inconclusive as to diffraction. Later it was shown [3] that diffraction would not be possible with fast atoms as in an atomic beam (1000m/s) but only with slow atoms (<30m/s). With this knowledge, a moving grating was employed [4] to slow the relative velocity between the atoms and the evanescent grating, while in another approach, Ne* atoms were actually slowed down to around 25m/s resulting in ≈5% diffraction [5].

© 1996 Optical Society of America