Atom-surface interactions can significantly modify the intensity and phase of atom de Broglie waves diffracted by a silicon nitride grating. This affects the operation of a material grating as a coherent beam splitter. The phase shift induced by diffraction is measured by comparing the relative phases of serveral interfering paths in a Mach-Zehnder Na atom interferometer formed by three materia...

A tunable external-cavity diode laser (ECDL) based on a transmission diffraction grating in a Littrow mount has been developed and characterized. A single-transverse-mode diode laser at 650 nm is used in an external-cavity configuration in which the transmission grating is used as a dispersive element to select the single longitudinal mode. The transmission diffraction grating is made with elec...

We propose a method for simultaneously measuring the position and emission color of single fluorescent emitters based on the use of a large pitch diffraction grating in the emission light path. The grating produces satellite spots adjacent to the main spot; the relative distance between the spots is a measure for the emission wavelength. We present proof-of-principle experiments on beads and mi...

The energy conservation of grating diffraction is analyzed in a particular condition of incidence in which two incident waves reach a symmetrical grating from the two sides of the grating normal at the first-order Littrow mounting. In such a situation the incident waves generate an interference pattern with the same period as the grating. Thus in each direction of diffraction, interference occu...

We have developed large size diffraction gratings and flat mirrors for large size pulse compressor in LFEX laser system. The required size of grating is 1.8 m, and we use 2 segment system with 91 cm element gratings. The substrates of mirrors and gratings are made of newly developed fused synthetic silica glass for low thermal expansion. The coating on this fused silica substrates are made by t...

We have demonstrated a novel diffraction grating for atoms. Acollimated beam of sodium atoms with a de Broglie wavelength of 17picometers was diffracted by transmission through an array of slitswith a spatial period of 0.2 μm formed in a gold membrane. This isthe first reported diffraction of atoms by a fabricated periodicstructure. Our transmission diffraction grating for a...

We introduce and demonstrate a simple, compact, and automatically aligned ultrashort-pulse compressor that uses only a single diffraction element—a grating or a grism (a grating on a prism). This design automatically has unity beam magnification and automatically contributes zero spatiotemporal distortions to the pulse, thus avoiding spatial chirp, angular dispersion, pulse-front tilt, and all ...

We show experimentally that diffraction-induced surface plasmon excitation can mimic enhanced transmission and cause a highly sensitive modulation by the coherent interference between zero-order and reflected first-order diffraction in select regions of the terahertz spectrum. Based on the study of a one-dimensional metallic grating, we obtain the physical mechanisms of the fractional-order sur...

Ultrasensitive surface bioaffinity sensors are created by the adsorption of gold nanoparticles onto gold diffraction gratings. An enhanced diffraction obtained in a surface plasmon resonance geometry is observed due to the optical coupling of the planar surface plasmons in the grating to the localized surface plasmons in the gold nanoparticles. As a first example, these nanoparticle grating bio...

We report the selective erasure of a previously recorded 100% diffraction efficiency grating in a photorefractive lithium niobate crystal. Both the recording and the selective erasure are carried out using self-stabilized holographic recording techniques. The recording and the erasure are shown to be in excellent agreement with the proposed corresponding theoretical model. After erasure, a grat...