Reconstruction of Casimir - Polder interactions from matter-wave interference experiments

Abstract

Interference of matter waves at nanostructures has been studied in a variety of experiments to explore the quantum nature of atoms, molecules and clusters. The detection process typically focuses on an amplitude measurement of the matter wave. However, more information can be gained about the physical mechanism behind the scattering process at the nanostructure by also investigating the phase properties of the matter wave. Measurement devices for the wavefront, known as Hartmann-Shack sensors, rely on a lens array to refocus the wavefront onto a screen and to detect lateral deviations of the focal position. Here we show that the construction of a similar device is possible for matter waves. In particular, we propose an experiment where the Casimir-Polder potential between a small polarisable particle and the nanostructure is reconstructed by measuring both the amplitude in a conventional set-up and the wavefront in a Hartmann-Shack configuration.