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Femtosecond diffractive imaging with a soft-X-ray free-electron laser

2006; Nature Portfolio; Volume: 2; Issue: 12 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1038/nphys461

1745-2481

Henry N. Chapman, Anton Barty, Michael J. Bogan, Sébastien Boutet, Matthias Frank, Stefan P. Hau‐Riege, Stefano Marchesini, Bruce W. Woods, S. Bajt, W. Henry Benner, Richard A. London, Elke Plönjes, Marion Kuhlmann, R. Treusch, S. Düsterer, T. Tschentscher, J. R. Schneider, Eberhard Spiller, T. Möller, Christoph Bostedt, M. Hoener, David A. Shapiro, Keith O. Hodgson, David van der Spoel, Florian Burmeister, M. Bergh, Carl Caleman, G. Huldt, M. Seibert, Filipe R. N. C. Maia, Richard Lee, A. Szöke, Nicuşor Tı̂mneanu, János Hajdu,

X-ray Spectroscopy and Fluorescence Analysis

Theory predicts1,2,3,4 that, with an ultrashort and extremely bright coherent X-ray pulse, a single diffraction pattern may be recorded from a large macromolecule, a virus or a cell before the sample explodes and turns into a plasma. Here we report the first experimental demonstration of this principle using the FLASH soft-X-ray free-electron laser. An intense 25 fs, 4×1013 W cm−2 pulse, containing 1012 photons at 32 nm wavelength, produced a coherent diffraction pattern from a nanostructured non-periodic object, before destroying it at 60,000 K. A novel X-ray camera assured single-photon detection sensitivity by filtering out parasitic scattering and plasma radiation. The reconstructed image, obtained directly from the coherent pattern by phase retrieval through oversampling5,6,7,8,9, shows no measurable damage, and is reconstructed at the diffraction-limited resolution. A three-dimensional data set may be assembled from such images when copies of a reproducible sample are exposed to the beam one by one10.