Abstract
In this paper we report on the experimental demonstration of the coherent diffraction of a metastable helium beam from a magneto-optical grating. The principle of the magneto-optical interaction for three- level atoms is discussed in Ref. 1. After a supersonic expansion the metastable helium atoms interact with a transverse light field consisting of two counterpropagating linearly polarized laser beams and a transverse magnetic field (see Fig. 1). The laser beams are resonant with the 23S1 to 23P2 transition, which contains a V-system suitable for the magneto-optical process.1 To avoid spontaneous emission the laser beams are focused such that the interaction time is much shorter than the excited-state life-time. The polarization vectors of the two beams are oriented at an angle ϕ with respect to each other.
© 1993 Optical Society of America
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