STANDING-WAVE DIFFRACTION WITH A BEAM OF SLOW ATOMS

We report on atom optical experiments employing a magnetooptical trap as a source of a pulsed beam of slow atoms. After turning off the trap , experiments are performed on the cloud of atoms in free fall over a distance of 45 cm. We give a detailed description of the apparatus and discuss experimental results on the diffraction of atoms from a stand ing light wave in the regimes of short, intermediate and long interact ion times.