We report on rotationally resolved laser induced fluorescence (LIF) and vibrationally resolved resonance enhanced multiphoton ionization (REMPI) spectroscopy of the chiral molecule 1-indanol. Spectra of the S1 ← S0 electronic...

We report on reflection and diffraction of beams of He and D 2 from square-wave gratings of a 400-μm period and strip widths ranging from 10 to 200 μm at grazing-incidence conditions. In each case we observe fully resolved matter-wave diffraction patterns including the specular reflection and diffracted beams up to the second diffraction order. With decreasing strip width, the observed diffraction efficiencies exhibit a transformation from the known regime of quantum reflection from the grating strips to the regime of edge diffraction from a half-plane array. The latter is described by a single-parameter model developed previously to describe phenomena as diverse as quantum billiards, scattering of radio waves in urban areas, and reflection of matter waves from microstructures. Our data provide experimental confirmation of the widespread model. Moreover, our results demonstrate that neither classical reflection nor quantum reflection are essential for reflective diffraction of matter waves from a structured solid, but it can result exclusively from half-plane edge diffraction.

Molecular beams of He and D are scattered from a ruled diffraction grating in conical-mount geometry under grazing-incidence conditions. Fully resolved diffraction patterns as a function of detection angle are recorded for different grating azimuth angles and for two different kinetic energies of the particle beams. Variations in diffraction peak widths are traced back to different velocity spreads of He and D determined by time-of-flight measurements. A comprehensive analysis of diffraction intensities confirms universal diffraction, that is, for identical de Broglie wavelengths, the relative diffraction intensities for He and D are the same. Universal diffraction results from peculiarities of quantum reflection of the atoms and molecules from the diffraction grating. In quantum reflection particles scatter many nanometers in front of the surface from the long-range attractive branch of the particle-surface interaction potential without probing the potential well and the short-range repulsive branch of the potential.

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We study the effect of rotational state–dependent alignment in the scattering of molecules by optical fields. CS2 molecules in their lowest few rotational states are adiabatically aligned and transversely accelerated by a nonresonant optical standing wave. The width of the measured transverse velocity distribution increases to 160 m/s with the field intensity, while its central peak position moves from 10 to −10 m/s. These changes are well reproduced by numerical simulations based on the rotational state–dependent alignment but cannot be modeled when ignoring these effects. Moreover, the molecular scattering by an off-resonant optical field amounts to manipulating the translational motion of molecules in a rotational state–specific way. Conversely, our results demonstrate that scattering from a nonresonant optical standing wave is a viable method for rotational state selection of nonpolar molecules.