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Nature Materials 8, 702–703 (1 September 2009) | doi:10.1038/nmat2521

X-ray spectroscopy: Revealing the atomic dance

G. Brian Stephenson , Aymeric Robert & Gerhard Gr|[uuml]|bel

On an atomic scale it has been difficult to directly observe relatively slow equilibrium fluctuations, such as the diffusion of atoms in solids. The timescales of such processes are too long for experimental techniques that rely on high energy resolution, such as inelastic scattering, and the length scales are too short for coherent visible-light techniques such as photon correlation spectroscopy.