Bragg Diffraction of Organic Molecules

20.07.2020

The Arndt Group has a new publication on the demonstration of Bragg diffraction for dyes and antibiotics with high internal excitation, polarizability anisotropy and dipole moment!

We demonstrate Bragg diffraction of the antibiotic ciprofloxacin and the dye molecule phthalocyanine at a thick optical grating. The observed patterns show a single dominant diffraction order with the expected dependence on the incidence angle as well as oscillating population transfer between the undiffracted and diffracted beams. We achieve an equal-amplitude splitting of 14ℏk (photon momenta) and maximum momentum transfer of 18ℏk. This paves the way for efficient, large-momentum beam splitters and mirrors for hot and complex molecules.

 

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