Polarizability measurements in a molecule near-field interferometer

Abstract

We apply near-field matter-wave interferometry to determine the absolute scalar polarizability of the fullerenes C${}_{60}$ and C${}_{70}$. A key feature of our experiment is the combination of good transmission and high spatial resolution, gained by wide molecular beams passing through sub-micron gratings. This allows to significantly facilitate the observation of field-dependent beam shifts. We thus measure the polarizability to be $\alpha =88.9\pm 0.9\pm 5.1{\mathring{\mathrm{A}}}^3$ for C${}_{60}$ and to $\alpha =108.5\pm 2.0\pm 6.2{\mathring{\mathrm{A}}}^3$ for C${}_{70}$.

4 pages, 4 figures

Cited by in corpus (2)

• Theory of near-field matter wave interference beyond the eikonal approximation
• Optical polarizabilities of large molecules measured in near-field interferometry