Dresden 2011 – wissenschaftliches Programm
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A: Fachverband Atomphysik
A 26: Poster III
A 26.15: Poster
Donnerstag, 17. März 2011, 16:00–18:30, P2
Impact of hollow-atom formation on coherent x-ray scattering at high intensity — •Sang-Kil Son1, Linda Young2, and Robin Santra1,3 — 1Center for Free-Electron Laser Science, DESY, Germany — 2Argonne National Laboratory, USA — 3Department of Physics, University of Hamburg, Germany
X-ray free-electron lasers (FELs) are promising tools for structural determination of macromolecules via coherent x-ray scattering. The key obstacle for scattering imaging is radiation damage by ultraintense x-ray pulses. We develop a toolkit to treat detailed ionization, relaxation, and scattering dynamics for an atom within a consistent theoretical framework, and investigate the coherent x-ray scattering problem for a carbon atom including radiation damage. We find that the x-ray scattering intensity saturates at a high fluence but can be maximized by using a pulse duration much shorter than the relaxation time scales of the inner-shell vacancy states created. Under these conditions, both inner-shell electrons are removed, and the resulting hollow atom gives rise to a scattering pattern with little loss of quality for a desirable resolution. Our numerical results predict that in order to scatter from a carbon atom 0.1 photons per x-ray pulse, within a spatial resolution of 1.7 Å, a fluence of 107 photons/Å2 per pulse is required at a pulse length of 1 fs and a photon energy of 12 keV. By using a pulse length of a few hundred attoseconds, one can suppress even secondary ionization processes in extended systems. The present results suggest that high-brightness attosecond x-ray FELs would be ideal for single-shot imaging of individual macromolecules.