Young electron interference effects in atomic ionization collisions

Abstract

Even though the concept of interference was already implicit in Newton's 1688 explanation of the anomaly of the tides in the Gulf of Tongkin, it was Thomas Young in his Bakerian Lectures who generalized this idea and applied it to a variety of situations. His celebrated interference experiment has been regarded as a prime demonstration of the wave-nature of light and, when applied to electrons, was recently voted as the most beautiful experiment in Physics. Since the foundational times of Modern Physics, the appearance of electron interference effects in different atomic processes has never failed to attract considerable attention. In this communication we review some interference mechanisms that occur in ionization collisions. Furthermore, we show how some of these mechanisms resemble at an atomic-size level three different versions of Young's famous demonstration.