Impact of ultrafast electronic damage in single particle x-ray imaging experiments

Abstract

In single particle coherent x-ray diffraction imaging experiments, performed at x-ray free-electron lasers (XFELs), samples are exposed to intense x-ray pulses to obtain single-shot diffraction patterns. The high intensity induces electronic dynamics on the femtosecond time scale in the system, which can reduce the contrast of the obtained diffraction patterns and adds an isotropic background. We quantify the degradation of the diffraction pattern from ultrafast electronic damage by performing simulations on a biological sample exposed to x-ray pulses with different parameters. We find that the contrast is substantially reduced and the background is considerably strong only if almost all electrons are removed from their parent atoms. This happens at fluences of at least one order of magnitude larger than provided at currently available XFEL sources.

15 pages, 3 figures submitted to PRL

Cited by in corpus (9)

• Toward atomic resolution diffractive imaging of isolated molecules with x-ray free-electron lasers
• Characterizing and optimizing a laser-desorption molecular beam source
• Fluorescence intensity correlation imaging with high resolution and elemental contrast using intense x-ray pulses
• Theoretical investigation of orbital alignment of x-ray-ionized atoms in exotic electronic configurations
• State-resolved ionization dynamics of neon atom induced by x-ray free-electron-laser pulses
• CMInject: Python framework for the numerical simulation of nanoparticle injection pipelines
• Evolution of the ionic polarization in multiple sequential ionization: general equations and an illustrative example
• Theory of high-energy correlated multiphoton x-ray diffraction for synchrotron radiation sources
• Single molecule imaging with longer x-ray laser pulses