Determination of the bond length and binding energy of the helium dimer by diffraction from a transmission grating.

A molecular beam consisting of small helium clusters is diffracted from a 100 nm period transmission grating. The relative dimer intensities have been measured out to the 7th order and are used to determine the reduction of the effective slit width resulting from the finite size of the dimer. From a theoretical analysis of the data which also takes into account the van der Waals interaction with the grating bars, the bond length (mean internuclear distance) and the binding energy are found to be = 52+/-4 A and |E(b)| = 1. 1+0.3/-0.2 mK.