Abstract
The existence of wavy properties associated with material particles is one of the fundamental achievements of quantum mechanics. Thus, the experimental use of single, double, or multiple slits has become a standard test of the universality of matter diffraction phenomena, independently of both the type of diffracted particle (charged or neutral, elementary or composite) and the interaction between particles and diffracting objects (electromagnetic or nuclear). This is confirmed by a large amount of experiments, ranging from tiny objects such as electrons, neutrons, single atoms, or small clusters, to more complex, mesoscopic-sized systems such as fullerenes, large biomolecues or Bose-Einstein condensates. Several effects will also be discussed such as the so-called Talbot effect responsible for displaying carpet-like patterns in the near-field region as well as the Talbot-Beeby effect responsible for the distortion of the corresponding patterns due to the presence of attractive interactions between diffracted particles and gratings.
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Sanz, Á.S., Miret-Artés, S. (2014). Interference and Interferometry. In: A Trajectory Description of Quantum Processes. II. Applications. Lecture Notes in Physics, vol 831. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-17974-7_3
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