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Abstract:
Since de Broglie’s work on the wave nature of particles, various optical phenomena have been observed with matter
waves of atoms and molecules. However, the analogy between classical and atom/molecule optics is not exact
because of different dispersion relations. In addition, according to de Broglie’s formula, different combinations of
particle mass and velocity can give the same de Broglie wavelength. As a result, even for identical wavelengths,
different molecular properties such as electric polarizabilities, Casimir-Polder forces, and dissociation energies
modify (and potentially suppress) the resulting matter-wave optical phenomena such as diffraction intensities or
interference effects. We report on the universal behavior observed in matter-wave diffraction of He atoms and
He2 and D2
molecules from a ruled grating. Clear evidence for emerging beam resonances is observed in the
diffraction patterns, which are quantitatively the same for all three particles and only depend on the de Broglie
wavelength. A model, combining secondary scattering and quantum reflection, permits us to trace the observed
universal behavior back to the peculiar principles of quantum reflection.
