Matter-wave interferometry with increasingly larger masses could pave the way to understanding the nature of wavefunction collapse, the quantum to classical transition or even how an object in a spatial superposition interacts with its gravitational field. In order to improve upon the current mass record, it is necessary to move into the nano-particle regime. In this paper we provide a design for a nano-particle Talbot-Lau matter-wave interferometer that circumvents the practical challenges of previously proposed designs. We present simulations of the expected fringe patterns that such an interferometer would produce, considering all major sources of decoherence. We discuss the practical challenges involved in building such an experiment as well as some preliminary experimental results to illustrate the proposed measurement scheme. We show that such a design is suitable for seeing interference fringes with 106amu SiO2 particles, and that this design can be extended to even 108amu particles by using flight times below the typical Talbot time of the system.
@article{arxiv.2312.12974,
title = {Nanoparticle Interferometer by Throw and Catch},
author = {Jakub Wardak and Tiberius Georgescu and Giulio Gasbarri and Alessio Belenchia and Hendrik Ulbricht},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2312.12974},
year = {2024}
}