Lau Interferometry with Visible Light and Electron Waves Niket Thakkar Dr. Ben McMorran Professor Alex Cronin NASA Space Grant Symposium April 18th, 2009 Hi, I’m niket. With the help of a former grad student named ben and my mentor alex cronin I’ve done some research on Lau interferometry with light and electrons. So, I’ll explain what I did first and a little bit on how it works and then I’ll get into what the point is. So…here we go …

But, before talking about a Lau interferometer… We should talk about diffraction - Diffraction analogy

Coherence Length Coherence length affects the interference pattern. My goal was to find a way to measure coherence. B Coh length - “how far apart A and B can be located and still interfere predictably (I.e. make fringes)” A

The Optical Lau Interferometer G1 G2 Light passes through the grating, creates an interference effect, as that happens, there’s another grating. It makes this. click

Lau Fringes Misaligned Gratings Perfectly Aligned Gratings

Measuring Coherence For a Gaussian case:

The Electron Lau Interferometer Louis de Broglie http://faculty.randolphcollege.edu/tmichalik/debroglie.htm

The Electron Lau Interferometer Vac Tungsten Source Magnetic Lenses Diffraction Gratings Detector

X-Ray Lau Interferometry Source G1 G2

Thank you for your attention