X-rays articles within Nature Physics

Featured

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The intermediate states in photo-excited phase transitions are expected to be inhomogeneous. However, ultrafast X-ray imaging shows the early part of the metal–insulator transition in VO2 is homogeneous but then becomes heterogeneous.

    • Allan S. Johnson
    • , Daniel Perez-Salinas
    •  & Simon E. Wall

  • Article |

    A spectroscopic study of strontium titanate provides a method for transferring the vibrational energy of a low-frequency phonon mode to higher-frequency modes, with the potential to access elusive ‘silent’ modes.

    • M. Kozina
    • , M. Fechner
    •  & M. C. Hoffmann

  • Letter |

    Multiphoton superradiance is observed in a nuclear system excited by an X-ray free-electron laser. Tracking the system decay photon by photon shows strong enhancement of the first photon’s decay rate, in good agreement with Dicke’s formulation.

    • Aleksandr I. Chumakov
    • , Alfred Q. R. Baron
    •  & Tetsuya Ishikawa

  • News & Views |

    Micro-explosions triggered by the absorption of X-ray laser light in drops and jets of water result in shock waves and in rapid heating and expansion of the liquid — as now revealed in state-of-the-art experiments.

    • Susan Davis Allen

  • Article |

    X-ray-induced explosions in water drops, examined using time-resolved imaging, show interacting high-speed liquid and vapour flows. This type of X-ray absorption dynamics is predictable and may be used for inducing particular dynamical liquid states.

    • Claudiu A. Stan
    • , Despina Milathianaki
    •  & Sébastien Boutet

  • Letter |

    Overlaying two transparent phase masks in a light beam results in a far-field achromatic intensity pattern. This effect lies at the basis of a polychromatic far-field interferometer for use in X-ray phase-contrast imaging without absorption gratings.

    • Houxun Miao
    • , Alireza Panna
    •  & Han Wen

  • Article |

    Defects affect materials’ properties. A method is now presented for studying dynamic processes during the growth of thin films — specifically, the evolution of defects — based on the coherent mixing of bulk and surface X-ray scattering signals.

    • Jeffrey G. Ulbrandt
    • , Meliha G. Rainville
    •  & Randall L. Headrick

  • News & Views |

    A nonlinear Compton scattering experiment with X-ray photons using an X-ray free-electron laser exhibits an unexpected frequency shift — hinting at the breakdown of standard approximations.

    • Adriana Pálffy

  • Article |

    Radiation–matter interactions can become highly nonlinear when using high-intensity X-ray free-electron lasers. Under such conditions, it is shown that nonlinear Compton scattering has an anomalous redshift, whose origin remains unclear.

    • Matthias Fuchs
    • , Mariano Trigo
    •  & David A. Reis

  • News & Views |

    Magnetic fields can be used to modify light absorption in chiral media, but the effect is weak, so the potential of this approach has gone largely untapped. Synchrotron radiation may provide a solution, enabling surprisingly strong dichroisms in a molecular helix.

    • José Ramón Galán-Mascarós

  • News & Views |

    A relativistic electron beam travelling on an undulating path interacts with a laser and emits light carrying orbital angular momentum. The wavelengths of these bright twisted-light beams can go down to those of hard X-rays.

    • Marie-Emmanuelle Couprie

  • Letter |

    The interaction between light and a relativistic electron beam can be used to generate optical vortices in a free electron laser, providing a way to engineer bright orbital angular momentum light at shorter X-ray wavelengths.

    • Erik Hemsing
    • , Andrey Knyazik
    •  & James B. Rosenzweig

  • News & Views |

    A sophisticated model of the birth and early evolution of coronal mass ejections could lead to better forecast of the 'weather' in space.

    • Stefaan Poedts

  • Article |

    Sudden bursts of charged particles emitted from the surface of the Sun can disrupt the satellites orbiting Earth. However, the mechanisms that drive these so-called coronal mass ejections remain unclear. An advanced computer model now establishes a link between the onset of an ejection and the emergence of magnetic flux into the solar atmosphere.

    • Ilia I. Roussev
    • , Klaus Galsgaard
    •  & Jun Lin

Browse broader subjects

Browse X-rays across other nature.com journals