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X-ray imaging

Ultrafast diffract-and-destroy movies

Combining optical and X-ray lasers enables imaging with high temporal and spectral resolution. By taking pictures of a succession of exploding targets, a movie can be made charting the dynamics of the solid material on a 10-ps timescale.

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Figure 1: Each frame of a diffract-and-destroy movie comes from different but identical objects, with a different delay (here a 10-ps difference) between the onset of the explosion and the instant the scattering pattern is obtained.

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Spence, J. Ultrafast diffract-and-destroy movies. Nature Photon 2, 390–391 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2008.115

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2008.115

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