  Here, the influence of resonance photon-atom scattering on the atom
interference pattern at the exit of a three-grating Mach-Zehnder interferometer
is studied. It is assumed that the scattering process does not destroy the
atomic wave function describing the state of the atom before the scattering
process takes place, but only induces a certain shift and change of its phase.
We find that the visibility of the interference strongly depends on the
statistical distribution of transferred momenta to the atom during the
photon-atom scattering event. This also explains the experimentally observed
(Chapman et al 1995 Phys. Rev. Lett. 75 2783) dependence of the visibility on
the ratio d_p/\lambda_i = y'_{12} (2\pi/kd\lambda_i), where y'_{12} is distance
between the place where the scattering event occurs and the first grating, k is
the wave number of the atomic center-of-mass motion, $d$ is the grating
constant and \lambda_i is the photon wavelength. Furthermore, it is remarkable
that photon-atom scattering events happen experimentally within the Fresnel
region, i.e. the near field region, associated with the first grating, which
should be taken into account when drawing conclusions about the relevance of
"which-way" information for the interference visibility.
