Visibility of interference in Feynman's atomic light microscope
D. Arsenović, Mirjana Božić · Physica Scripta · 2012
The visibility of the interference pattern in Feynman's atomic light microscope is studied theoretically using the evolution of the wave function of individual atoms passing through a double slit grating and interacting with laser light (of the wave vector ki). Assuming that the slits' width (δ) is much smaller than the slits' distance (d), the expressions for visibility as functions of dki were derived for uniform and for Mandel distribution of transferred momentum during photon atom resonance scattering. The decreasing of oscillations of visibility with increasing dki was explained taking into account the wave functions of individual atoms and the statistics of transverse momentum transferred to atoms. The influence of nonnegligible slits' width on visibility was studied numerically. It is found that revivals are present for infinitesimally wide slits as well as when slits have finite width.