Index of refraction of molecular nitrogen for sodium matter waves

Abstract

We calculate the index of refraction of sodium matter waves propagating through a gas of nitrogen molecules. We use a recent ab initio potential for the ground state of the NaN_2 Van der Waals complex to perform quantal close-coupling calculations and compute the index of refraction as a function of the projectile velocity. We obtain good agreement with the available experimental data. We show that the refractive index contains glory oscillations, but that they are damped by the averaging over the thermal motion of the N_2 molecules. These oscillations appear at lower temperatures and projectile velocity. We also investigate the behavior of the refractive index at low temperature and low projectile velocity to show its dependence on the rotational state of N_2, and discuss the advantage of using diatomic molecules as projectiles.