Coherent Atom Optics with fast metastable rare gas atoms

Coherent atom optics experiments making use of an ultra-narrow beam of fast metastable atoms generated by metastability exchange are reported. The transverse coherence of the beam (coherence radius of 1.7 μm for He*, 1.2 μm for Ne*, 0.87 μm for Ar*) is demonstrated via the atomic diffraction by a non-magnetic 2μm-period reflection grating. The combination of the non-scalar van der Waals (vdW) interaction with the Zeeman interaction generated by a static magnetic field gives rise to ''vdW-Zeeman'' transitions among Zeeman sub-levels. Exo-energetic transitions of this type are observed with Ne*(3P2) atoms traversing a copper micro-slit grating. They can be used as a tunable beam splitter in an inelastic Fresnel bi-prism atom interferometer