Quantum wave nature of van der Waals clusters of biomolecules

Organic clusters are weakly bound (ca. 0.3 eV) ensembles of covalently bound polyatomic complexes. 
We study here structures of up to 10 vanillin molecules van der Waals bound into a larger cluster and demonstrate that the entire polymolecular ensemble can undergo de Broglie wave delocalization and interference.

This feat was achieved in OTIMA interferometry [1] and is published in [2]. 

  1. Philipp Haslinger, Nadine Dörre, Philipp Geyer, Jonas Rodewald, Stefan Nimmrichter, and Markus Arndt, A universal matter-wave interferometer with optical ionization gratings in the time domain
    Nature Physics 9, 144–148 (2013).
  2. Nadine Dörre, Jonas Rodewald, Philipp Geyer, Bernd von Issendorff, Philipp Haslinger, and Markus Arndt, Photofragmentation Beam Splitters for Matter-Wave Interferometry
    Physical Review Letters 113, 233001 (2014).