Abstract
This paper is an accompaniment to the three reports on the Helium Atom Microscope, written in the years 1991 and 1992, which assess various designs scenarios for an atom microscope, anticipates their performance and identifies hurdles to overcome. It was written between 1991 and 1993 while the author was an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow, hosted by the Max Planck Institut für Strömungsforschung, Göttingen, and under the guidance of Professor J. P. Toennies, when together they were investigating the feasibility of building such a device.” This paper focuses on the concepts of coherence length and coherence width, both of which should be considered, when optimizing an atom microscope design.
