Incoherent Diffractive Imaging via Intensity Correlations of Hard X Rays

Phys Rev Lett. 2017 Aug 4;119(5):053401. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.053401. Epub 2017 Jul 31.

Abstract

Established x-ray diffraction methods allow for high-resolution structure determination of crystals, crystallized protein structures, or even single molecules. While these techniques rely on coherent scattering, incoherent processes like fluorescence emission-often the predominant scattering mechanism-are generally considered detrimental for imaging applications. Here, we show that intensity correlations of incoherently scattered x-ray radiation can be used to image the full 3D arrangement of the scattering atoms with significantly higher resolution compared to conventional coherent diffraction imaging and crystallography, including additional three-dimensional information in Fourier space for a single sample orientation. We present a number of properties of incoherent diffractive imaging that are conceptually superior to those of coherent methods.