Kazuhiro HANE and Hitomi TAKAHASHI

Department of Mechatronics and Precision Engineering, Aramaki, Aoba-ku, Tohoku University, Sendai, 980-77 Japan

(Received November 30, 1995; Accepted April 1, 1996)

A grating interferometer composed of two transmission gratings in tandem irradiated incoherently was studied for an atom interferometer. Determination of its interference effect was made with consideration of the optical transfer function. An atom beam had a velocity distribution, which made the influence on the interference phenomenon. The calculated results show that the fringe (grating image) with relatively high contrast is obtained under a certain grating arrangement even if the interferometer is irradiated by a spatially incoherent polychromatic atom beam.

Key words: atom interferometer, optical transfer function, interference, incoherent, transmission grating, Lau effect