On the role of the electric dipole moment in the diffraction of biomolecules at nanomechanical gratings

Christian Knobloch, Benjamin A. Stickler, Christian Brand, Michele Sclafani, Yigal Lilach, Thomas Juffmann, Ori Cheshnovsky, Klaus Hornberger, Markus Arndt*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

11 Scopus citations

Abstract

We investigate effects of a permanent electric dipole moment on matter-wave diffraction at nanomechanical gratings. Specifically, the diffraction patterns of hypericin at ultra-thin carbonaceous diffraction masks are compared with those of a polar and a non-polar porphyrin derivative of similar mass and de Broglie wavelength. We present a theoretical analysis of the diffraction of a rotating dipole highlighting that small local electric charges in the material mask can strongly reduce the interference visibility. We discuss the relevance of this finding for single grating diffraction and multi-grating interferometry with biomolecules.

Original languageEnglish
Article number1600025
JournalFortschritte der Physik
Volume65
Issue number6-8
DOIs
StatePublished - Jun 2017

Funding

FundersFunder number
Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung
European Commission304886, 320694
Austrian Science FundDK CoQuS W1210-3

    Keywords

    • Matter-wave interferometry
    • biomolecules
    • dephasing
    • dipole moment
    • hypericin

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