Fluorescence intensity correlation imaging with high spatial resolution and elemental contrast using intense x-ray pulses

• Published in: Structural dynamics (Melville, N.Y.) Vol. 8; no. 4; p. 044101
• Main Authors: Ho, Phay J., Knight, Christopher, Young, Linda
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States American Crystallographic Association/AIP 01.07.2021; American Crystallographic Association; AIP Publishing LLC and ACA
• Subjects: CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSICS; Theory of Ultrafast X-ray and Electron Phenomena
• ISSN: 2329-7778; 2329-7778
• DOI: 10.1063/4.0000105

We theoretically investigate the fluorescence intensity correlation (FIC) of Ar clusters and Mo-doped iron oxide nanoparticles subjected to intense, femtosecond, and sub-femtosecond x-ray free-electron laser pulses for high-resolution and elemental contrast imaging. We present the FIC of K α and K α h emission in Ar clusters and discuss the impact of sample damage on retrieving high-resolution structural information and compare the obtained structural information with those from the coherent diffractive imaging (CDI) approach. We found that, while sub-femtosecond pulses will substantially benefit the CDI approach, few-femtosecond pulses may be sufficient for achieving high-resolution information with the FIC. Furthermore, we show that the fluorescence intensity correlation computed from the fluorescence of the Mo atoms in Mo-doped iron oxide nanoparticles can be used to image dopant distributions in the nonresonant regime.