Related papers: Theory and experimental verification of Kapitza-Di…
Research on matter waves is a thriving field of quantum physics and has recently stimulated many investigations with electrons, neutrons, atoms, Bose-condensed ensembles, cold clusters and hot molecules. Coherence experiments with complex…
We discuss modern developments in quantum optics with organic molecules, clusters and nanoparticles -- in particular recent realizations of near-field matter-wave interferometry. A unified theoretical description in phase space allows us to…
We demonstrate a near-field Talbot-Lau interferometer for C-70 fullerene molecules. Such interferometers are particularly suitable for larger masses. Using three free-standing gold gratings of one micrometer period and a transversally…
We discuss a novel application of matter wave interferometry to characterize the scalar optical polarizability of molecules at 532 nm. The interferometer presented here consists of two material absorptive gratings and one central optical…
Interactions between atoms and light fields are usually described in the electric-dipole approximation. We show that electric-quadrupole terms are important in the Kapitza-Dirac arrangement for light gratings on resonance with a quadrupole…
The Kapitza - Dirac effect is the diffraction of a well - collimated particle beam by a standing wave of light. Why is this interesting? Comparing this situation to the introductory physics textbook example of diffraction of a laser beam by…
In the Kapitza-Dirac effect, atoms, molecules, or swift electrons are diffracted off a standing wave grating of the light intensity created by two counter-propagating laser fields. In ultrafast electron optics, such a coherent beam splitter…
We study the interference of C70 fullerenes in a Talbot-Lau interferometer with a large separation between the diffraction gratings. This permits the observation of recurrences of the interference contrast both as a function of the de…
The dual wave-particle nature of quantum objects is a notoriously unintuitive feature of quantum theories. However, it is often deemed essential, due to quantum objects exhibiting diffraction and interference. We extend the work of…
Recent progress in matter-wave interferometry aims to directly probe the quantum properties of matter on ever increasing scales. However, in order to perform interferometric experiments with massive mesoscopic objects, taking into account…
Lasers with wavelengths of the order of the atomic size are becoming available. We explore the behavior of light-matter interactions in this emergent field by considering the atomic Kapitza-Dirac effect. We derive the diffraction patterns,…
The electronic wavefunction is at the heart of physical phenomena, defining the frontiers of quantum materials research. While the amplitude of the electron wavefunction in crystals can be measured with state-of-the-art probes in…
Linear-response time-dependent (TD) density-functional theory (DFT) has been implemented in the pseudopotential wavelet-based electronic structure program BigDFT and results are compared against those obtained with the all-electron…
Quantum effects of plasmonic phenomena have been explored through ab-initio studies, but only for exceedingly small metallic nanostructures, leaving most experimentally relevant structures too large to handle. We propose instead an…
We investigate the influence of thermally activated internal molecular dynamics on the phase shifts of matter waves inside a molecule interferometer. While de Broglie physics generally describes only the center-of-mass motion of a quantum…
We give a fairly comprehensive review of wavelets and of their application to density-functional theory (DFT) and to our recent application of a wavelet-based version of linear-response time-dependent DFT (LR-TD-DFT). Our intended audience…
A new type of atomic interferometer is proposed, in which the traditional method of measuring the state of an atom is replaced by the technique of polarization spectroscopy using the working substance of a clot of condensate of two-level…
Strong field photoemission and electron recollision provide a viable route to extract electronic and nuclear dynamics from molecular targets with attosecond temporal resolution. However, since an {\em ab-initio} treatment of even the…
We report initial observations of coherent optical transition radiation interferometry (COTRI) patterns generated by microbunched electrons from laser-driven plasma accelerators (LPAs). These are revealed in the angular distribution…
Complete theoretical understanding of the most complex superconductors requires a detailed knowledge of the symmetry of the superconducting energy-gap $\Delta_\mathbf{k}^\alpha$, for all momenta $\mathbf{k}$ on the Fermi surface of every…