Matter-Wave Self-Imaging by Atomic Center-of-Mass Motion Induced Interference

We demonstrate matter-wave self-imaging resulting from atomic center-of-mass motion-based interference. We show that non-negligible atomic center-of-mass motion and an instantaneous Doppler shift can drastically change the condensate momentum distribution, resulting in a periodic collapse and the recurrence of condensate diffraction probability as a function of the stationary light-field pulsing time. The observed matter-wave self-imaging is characterized by an atomic center-of-mass motion induced population amplitude interference in the presence of the light field that simultaneously minimizes all high (n≥1) diffraction orders and maximizes the zeroth diffraction component.