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Letter

Nature Physics 2, 839–843 (1 December 2006) | doi:10.1038/nphys461

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

Henry N. Chapman , Anton Barty , Michael J. Bogan , S|[eacute]|bastien Boutet , Matthias Frank , Stefan P. Hau-Riege , Stefano Marchesini , Bruce W. Woods , Sa|[scaron]|a Bajt , W. Henry Benner , Richard A. London , Elke Pl|[ouml]|njes , Marion Kuhlmann , Rolf Treusch , Stefan D|[uuml]|sterer , Thomas Tschentscher , Jochen R. Schneider , Eberhard Spiller , Thomas M|[ouml]|ller , Christoph Bostedt , Matthias Hoener , David A. Shapiro , Keith O. Hodgson , David van der Spoel , Florian Burmeister , Magnus Bergh , Carl Caleman , G|[ouml]|sta Huldt , M. Marvin Seibert , Filipe R. N. C. Maia , Richard W. Lee , Abraham Sz|[ouml]|ke , Nicusor Timneanu & Janos Hajdu

Theory predicts 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.