Macroscopic and mesoscopic matter waves

It has been shown earlier [3,6] that matter waves which are known to lie typically in the range of a few angstrom, can also manifest in the macrodomain with a wave length of a few centimeters, for electrons propagating along a magnetic field. This followed from the predictions of a probability amplitude theory by the author [1,2] in the classical macrodomain of the dynamics of charged particles in a magnetic field. It is shown in this paper that this case constitutes only a special case of a generic situation whereby composite systems such as atoms and molecules in their highly excited internal states, can exhibit matter wave manifestation in macro and mesodomains, in one-dimensional scattering. The wave length of these waves is determined, not by the mass of the particle as in the case of the de Broglie wave, but by the frequency ω, of the classical orbital motion of the internal state in the correspondence limit, and is given by a nonquantal expression, λ = 2πv/ω, v being the velocity of the particle. For the electrons in a magnetic field the frequency corresponds to the gyrofrequency, Ω and the nonquantal wave length is given by λ = 2πv _|| /Ω; v _|| being the velocity of electrons along the magnetic field. Received 29 September 2001 / Received in final form 23 May 2002 Published online 19 July 2002