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Optics

Ultrafast X-ray photography

Nature volume 460, pages 1088–1090 (2009)Cite this article

A super-fast, lensless microscope has been developed that works by decoding the diffraction patterns of bright, laser-like flashes of X-rays. This advance should enable ultrafast events at the nanoscale to be recorded.

Stroboscopic photography has profoundly improved our understanding of both nature and technology, as illustrated by the beautiful snapshots of a milk droplet splashing, or a bullet piercing an apple, produced by the pioneer of the technique, Harold Edgerton. In Physical Review Letters, Ravasio et al.1 report that they have captured an image of a nano-object using a single burst of X-rays from the fastest strobe light in existence.

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Figure 1: Decoding the notes.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Margaret M. Murnane is in the Department of Physics and JILA, University of Colorado at Boulder, Colorado 90309-0440, USA. margaret.murnane@colorado.edu,

    Margaret M. Murnane

  2. Jianwei Miao is in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, and the California NanoSystems Institute, University of California, Los Angeles, California 90095-1547, USA. miao@physics.ucla.edu,

    Jianwei Miao

Authors
  1. Margaret M. Murnane
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  2. Jianwei Miao
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Murnane, M., Miao, J. Ultrafast X-ray photography. Nature 460, 1088–1090 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/4601088a

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