  We present a detailed investigation of the coherence properties of beam
splitters and Mach-Zehnder interferometers for guided atoms. It is demonstrated
that such a setup permits coherent wave packet splitting and leads to the
appearance of interference fringes. We study single-mode and thermal input
states and show that even for thermal input states interference fringes can be
clearly observed, thus demonstrating the multimode operation and the robustness
of the interferometer.
