X-rays articles from across Nature Portfolio

Due to dispersion, the group velocity of laser pulses propagating in plasmas slows down with increasing wavelength, which presents challenges for precision-controlled plasma interactions. Now, new techniques for spatio-temporal pulse shaping have lifted this limitation in the demonstration of short-pulse table-top soft X-ray lasers.

X-ray photons emitted by free electrons travelling in van der Waals materials show energy shifts induced by quantum recoil, thus offering a viable route to generating tailored and tunable single X-ray photons.

An organic scintillator with high imaging resolution and a low detection limit is fabricated by using heavy atoms to increase the X-ray absorption of thermally activated delayed fluorescence chromophores.

X-ray induced structural damage is well known, but the potential for changes in the kinetics of physical and chemical processes is rarely recognized or considered. These can happen over a wide intensity range, are difficult to predict and often escape detection. The problem deserves more attention from experimentalists.