Credit: Anatoli Ulmer and Taisia Gorkhover / The Technical University of Berlin and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
Illustration showing the principle of in-flight holography. (Left) The X-rays scatter off two spheres and form a characteristic diffraction pattern. The patterns are recorded using the very intense X-ray beam of SLAC’s X-ray laser, the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS). (Center) Changes in size and distance of the spheres are reflected in the patterns which can be directly translated from the diffraction alone. The smaller sphere can act as a holographic reference. (Right) If the spheres are shifted out of plane, the fine lines of the diffraction pattern become curved. The signatures of the position and size of the reference allow researchers to reconstruct the 3-D distances between the small sphere (reference) and the large sphere.