Eur. Phys. J. D 17, 141-144 (2001)
https://doi.org/10.1007/s100530170015

Metastable rare gas atoms scattered by nano- and micro-slit transmission gratings

¹ Dipartimento di Chimica dell'Università, via Elce di Sotto 8, 06123 Perugia, Italy
² Laboratoire de Physique des Lasers (UMR-CNRS 7538) , Université Paris 13, avenue J.B. Clément, 93430 Villetaneuse, France
³ Institute of Physics, University of Kragujevac, Kragujevac, Yugoslavia

Corresponding author: ^a baudon@lpl.univ-paris13.fr

Received: 6 July 2001
Revised: 17 September 2001
Published online: 15 November 2001

Abstract

The transmission of metastable argon atoms through nano-slit or micro-slit gratings is studied by use of time of flight and angular analysis. This transmission departs from the simple geometric one essentially by two ways: (i) the elastic or diagonal part of the van der Waals (vW) interaction with the solid causes an angular narrowing of the emerging beam; (ii) the off-diagonal vW interaction induces the exothermal fine structure transition meV) leading to large scattering angles; the resulting angular distribution is very sensitive to the roughness of the surface in the direction of the depth. An extension of these experiments to transversally coherent beams is proposed. It should be considered as a first step towards a new type of interferometer in which the inelastic diffraction makes the gratings work as beam splitters or mirrors.