Towards ultrafast dynamics with split-pulse X-ray photon correlation spectroscopy at free electron laser sources
- Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY), Hamburg (Germany)
- Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States). Materials Science Division
- Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY), Hamburg (Germany); The Hamburg Centre for Ultrafast Imaging (Germany)
- Korea Research Inst. of Standards and Science (KRISS), Daejeon (Korea, Republic of). Frontier in Extreme Physics; Univ. of Science and Technology, Daejeon (Korea, Republic of). Dept. of Nanoscience
- Osaka Univ. (Japan). Dept. of Precision Science and Technology. Graduate School of Engineering
- PNSensor GmbH, Munich (Germany)
- SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States). Linac Coherent Light Source
- McGill Univ., Montreal, QC (Canada). Dept. of Physics
One of the important challenges in condensed matter science is to understand ultrafast, atomic-scale fluctuations that dictate dynamic processes in equilibrium and non-equilibrium materials. Here, we report an important step towards reaching that goal by using a state-of-the-art perfect crystal based split-and-delay system, capable of splitting individual X-ray pulses and introducing femtosecond to nanosecond time delays. We show the results of an ultrafast hard X-ray photon correlation spectroscopy experiment at LCLS where split X-ray pulses were used to measure the dynamics of gold nanoparticles suspended in hexane. We show how reliable speckle contrast values can be extracted even from very low intensity free electron laser (FEL) speckle patterns by applying maximum likelihood fitting, thus demonstrating the potential of a split-and-delay approach for dynamics measurements at FEL sources. This will enable the characterization of equilibrium and, importantly also reversible non-equilibrium processes in atomically disordered materials.
- Research Organization:
- Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States); Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY), Hamburg (Germany); Korea Research Inst. of Standards and Science (KRISS), Daejeon (Korea, Republic of); SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States); SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (SLAC), Menlo Park, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- German Research Foundation (DFG); National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF); USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES) (SC-22)
- Grant/Contract Number:
- AC02-06CH11357; AC02-76SF00515
- OSTI ID:
- 1437360
- Journal Information:
- Nature Communications, Journal Name: Nature Communications Vol. 9; ISSN 2041-1723
- Publisher:
- Nature Publishing GroupCopyright Statement
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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