title: Matter-wave self-imaging by atomic center-of-mass motion induced interference.
abstract: We demonstrate matter-wave self-imaging resulting from atomic center-of-mass motion-based interference. We show that non-negligible atomic center-of-mass motion and an instantaneous Doppler shift can drastically change the condensate momentum distribution, resulting in a periodic collapse and the recurrence of condensate diffraction probability as a function of the stationary light-field pulsing time. The observed matter-wave self-imaging is characterized by an atomic center-of-mass motion induced population amplitude interference in the presence of the light field that simultaneously minimizes all high (n>or=1) diffraction orders and maximizes the zeroth diffraction component.
authors.affiliation: Physics Laboratory, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, Maryland 20899, USA.
authors.forename: Ke
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Deng
authors.forename: E W
authors.initials: EW
authors.lastname: Hagley
authors.forename: M G
authors.initials: MG
authors.lastname: Payne
authors.forename: M S
authors.initials: MS
authors.lastname: Zhan