Credit: SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
When X-rays (yellow beam) pass through a crystal (green shapes), they form an intensity pattern on a detector behind the crystal that is dominated by bright spots (dots in the background). Researchers use these so-called Bragg peaks to reconstruct atomic-resolution images of the molecules inside the crystals. In a new study at SLAC’s LCLS X-ray laser, researchers used continuous diffraction – signals found between the spots, which appear here as washed-out, continuous lines in the background – to improve the resolution of images obtained with the conventional analysis.