Diffraction of metastable helium atoms by a transmission grating

We report on the diffraction of metastable helium atoms (de Broglie wavelength _dB 1Å) passing a free-standing gold grating with a periodicity of 0.5 m. The observed positions and intensities of the different diffraction peaks are in good agreement with a theoretical model for the grating shape. The overall transmission of the grating for the excited state atoms is about 30%, mainly determined by the grating geometry. Our result indicates that microfabricated transmission gratings can be used as efficient and coherent beam splitters for rare gas atoms in long-lived excited states. This fact offers interesting possibilities in view of atom interferometry with metastable noble gas atoms.