The spatial properties of atomic Raman--Nath diffraction

This paper obtains the exact analytical solution of atomic Raman--Nath diffraction in the coordinate representation and discusses the influence of different initial conditions and detunings on the atomic spatial population distribution. The phase difference between the dipole matrix element and initial atomic population may influence the atomic spatial population distribution after diffraction, which has never been discussed before as far as we know. It offers a method to measure the phase by the spatial population distribution, which is interesting in the study of quantum optics.