Atom gratings produced by large angle atom beam splitters

Abstract

An asymptotic theory of atom scattering by large amplitude periodic potentials is developed in the Raman-Nath approximation. The atom grating profile arising after scattering is evaluated in the Fresnel zone for triangular, sinusoidal, magneto-optical, and bichromatic field potentials. It is shown that, owing to the scattering in these potentials, two \QTR{em}{groups} of momentum states are produced rather than two distinct momentum components. The corresponding spatial density profile is calculated and found to differ significantly from a pure sinusoid.

16 pages, 7 figures

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Atom-wave diffraction between the Raman-Nath and the Bragg regime: Effective Rabi frequency, losses, and phase shifts
• Analytic theory for Bragg atom interferometry based on the adiabatic theorem
• Momentum transfer using chirped standing wave fields: Bragg scattering
• Nonequilibrium dynamics in one-dimensional strongly interacting two-component gases
• Atomic quasi-Bragg diffraction in a magnetic field
• Sequantial large momentum transfer exploiting rectangular Raman pulses