1306.5458 (Pedro Sancho)

Atomic diffraction by light gratings with very short wavelengths    [PDF]

Pedro Sancho

Lasers with wavelengths of the order of the atomic size are becoming available. We explore the behavior of light-matter interactions in this emergent field by considering the atomic Kapitza-Dirac effect. We derive the diffraction patterns, which are in principle experimentally testable. From a fundamental point of view, our proposal provides an example of system where the periodicity of the diffraction grating is comparable to the size of the diffracted object.

View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1306.5458