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Letter

Nature Photonics 2, 560–563 (1 September 2008) | doi:10.1038/nphoton.2008.154

Massively parallel X-ray holography

Stefano Marchesini , S|[eacute]|bastien Boutet , Anne E. Sakdinawat , Michael J. Bogan , Sa|[scaron]|a Bajt , Anton Barty , Henry N. Chapman , Matthias Frank , Stefan P. Hau-Riege , Abraham Sz|[ouml]|ke , Congwu Cui , David A. Shapiro , Malcolm R. Howells , John C. H. Spence , Joshua W. Shaevitz , Joanna Y. Lee , Janos Hajdu & Marvin M. Seibert

Advances in the development of free-electron lasers offer the realistic prospect of nanoscale imaging on the timescale of atomic motions. We identify X-ray Fourier-transform holography as a promising but, so far, inefficient scheme to do this. We show that a uniformly redundant array placed next to the sample, multiplies the efficiency of X-ray Fourier transform holography by more than three orders of magnitude, approaching that of a perfect lens, and provides holographic images with both amplitude- and phase-contrast information. The experiments reported here demonstrate this concept by imaging a nano-fabricated object at a synchrotron source, and a bacterial cell with a soft-X-ray free-electron laser, where illumination by a single 15-fs pulse was successfully used in producing the holographic image. As X-ray lasers move to shorter wavelengths we expect to obtain higher spatial resolution ultrafast movies of transient states of matter.