Ultrafast Coherent X-ray Diffractive Nanoimaging

Abstract: X-ray lasers are creating unprecedented research opportunities in physics,chemistry and biology. The peak brightness of these lasers exceeds presentsynchrotrons by 1010, the coherence degeneracy parameters exceedsynchrotrons by 109, and the time resolution is 105 times better. In theduration of a single flash, the beam focused to a micron-sized spot has the samepower density as all the sunlight hitting the Earth, focused to a millimetresquare. Ultrafast coherent X-ray diffractive imaging (CXDI) with X-ray lasers exploitsthese unique properties of X-ray lasers to obtain high-resolution structures fornon-crystalline biological (and other) objects. In such an experiment, thesample is quickly vaporised, but not before sufficient scattered light can berecorded. The continuous diffraction pattern can then be phased and thestructure of a more or less undamaged sample recovered% (speed of light vs. speed of a shock wave).This thesis presents results from the first ultrafast X-ray diffractive imagingexperiments with linear accelerator-driven free-electron lasers and fromoptically-driven table-top X-ray lasers. It also explores the possibility ofinvestigating phase transitions in crystals by X-ray lasers. An important problem with ultrafast CXDI of small samples such as single proteinmolecules is that the signal from a single measurement will be small, requiringsignal enhancement by averaging over multiple equivalent samples. We present anumerical investigation of the problems, including the case where samplemolecules are not exactly identical, and propose tentative solutions. A new software package (Hawk) has been developed for data processing and imagereconstruction. Hawk is the first publicly available software package in thisarea, and it is released as an open source software with the aspiration offostering the development of this field.