Abstract
Interferometry in the time domain has proven valuable for matter-wave based measurements. This concept has recently been generalized to cold molecular clusters using short-pulse standing light waves which realized photo-depletion gratings, arranged in a time-domain Talbot–Lau interferometer (OTIMA). Here we extend this idea further to large organic molecules and demonstrate a new scheme to scan the emerging molecular interferogram in position space. The capability of analyzing different isotopes of the same monomer under identical conditions opens perspectives for studying the interference fringe shift as a function of time in gravitational free fall. The universality of OTIMA interferometry allows one to handle a large variety of particles. In our present work, quasi-continuous laser evaporation allows transferring fragile organic molecules into the gas phase, covering more than an order of magnitude in mass between 614 amu and 6509 amu, i.e. 300% more massive than in previous OTIMA experiments. For all masses, we find about 30% fringe visibility.
Highlights
Ever since its first conception by Louis de Broglie [1], the quantum wave nature of matter has triggered both philosophical debates and an interest in new applications
Pulsed laser heating is local and short. It is softer than evaporation in an oven and is well compatible with time-of-flight (TOF) velocity selection, which is required for optical time domain matter-wave (OTIMA)
Since the fermionic isotope 13C occurs with a natural abundance of 1%, more than 61.1% of all molecules are isotopically pure, 30.3% contain a single 13C isotope, 7.3% exactly two of them and 1.1% three such nuclei
Summary
Ever since its first conception by Louis de Broglie [1], the quantum wave nature of matter has triggered both philosophical debates and an interest in new applications. Ernst Lau [16] added the insight that such lens-less imaging can even be extended to spatially incoherent sources, by using a first grating as a sequence of parallel slit sources to prepare spatially coherent and cylindrically expanding wavelets from any incident light field. Such array illuminators [16] have been used in light optics [17], in atom [18, 19], molecule [20] and x-ray imaging [21]—i.e. in applications where the lack of spatially coherent sources is a key challenge
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