How does the Double Slit Experiment work in detail?

Question

What is the best detailed description/visualisation of the experiment available?

Describing what is actually measured, how the data is analysed, correlated and interpreted when for example large molecules are send through the apparatus? What are the active components? What role does time and correlation within the measured data play?

How for example did the guys in Vienna http://www.livescience.com/19268-quantum-double-slit-experiment-largest-molecules.html actually confirm an interference pattern? did they? What do they detect? How? What is the actual physical magnitude they measure at the "screen" showing the interference?

Answer 1

Have a look at http://arxiv.org/abs/1009.1569. In this article Thomas Juffmann discusses some of the practical issues in doing these experiments.

In principle these experiments aren't hard, but in practice there are lots of technical difficulties. For example the large molecules need to be all moving at the same velocity(i.e. the beam needs to be very cold) otherwise they'll have a spread of de Broglie wavelengths and you'll get a blur instead of a sharp diffraction pattern.

Also the attractive Van der Waals forces between even non-polar molecules, and I suppose between the molecules and the sides of the slits, start to get significant as the size increases and this blurs your pattern as well. I suppose interactions with the slits would decohere the beam as well.