Reconstruction of the shapes of gold nanocrystals using coherent x-ray diffraction - art. no. 195505

Inverse problems arise frequently in physics: The magnitude of the Fourier transform of some function is measurable, but not its phase. The "phase pro blem" in crystallography arises because the number of discrete measurements (Bragg peak intensities) is only half the number of unknowns (electron den sity points in space). Sayre first proposed that oversampling of diffractio n data should allow a solution, and this has recently been demonstrated. He re we report the successful phasing of an oversampled hard x-ray diffractio n pattern measured from a single nanocrystal of gold.