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Issue EPL
Volume 57, Number 2, January 2002
Page(s) 158 - 163
Section General
DOI 10.1209/epl/i2002-00556-5

DOI: 10.1209/epl/i2002-00556-5


Europhys. Lett., 57 (2) , p. 158 (2002)

Hydrogen atom interferometer with short light pulses

T. Heupel1, M. Mei1, M. Niering1, B. Gross1, M. Weitz1, T. W. Hänsch1 and Ch. J. Bordé2

1  Max-Planck-Institut für Quantenoptik - 85748 Garching, Germany and Sektion Physik der Universität München - 80799 München, Germany
2  Laboratoire de Physique des Lasers, UPN - Villetaneuse, France and Laboratoire de Radioastronomie Millimetrique, UPMC - Paris, France

(Received 25 July 2001; accepted in final form 23 October 2001)

Abstract
We report the realization of a hydrogen atom interferometer experiment using light as the atomic beam splitter. The wave packets of hydrogen atoms excited to the metastable 2S state are coherently split up and later recombined with the help of intense nanosecond light pulses. The pulses are generated by a novel phase-coherent source. These experiments can be seen as a step towards a precision measurement of the recoil energy of a hydrogen atom when absorbing a photon and thus of $\hbar/m_\ab{hydrogen}$.

PACS
03.75.Dg - Atom and neutron interferometry.
39.20.+q - Atom interferometry techniques.
32.80.Lg - Mechanical effects of light on atoms, molecules, and ions.


© EDP Sciences 2002


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