Coherent diffractive imaging of single helium nanodroplets with a high harmonic generation source
Abstract
Coherent diffractive imaging of individual free nanoparticles has opened novel routes for the in-situ analysis of their transient structural, optical, and electronic properties. So far, single-shot single-particle diffraction was assumed to be feasible only at extreme ultraviolet (XUV) and X-ray free-electron lasers, restricting this research field to large-scale facilities. Here we demonstrate single-shot imaging of isolated helium nanodroplets using XUV pulses from a femtosecond-laser driven high harmonic source. We obtain bright wide-angle scattering patterns, that allow us to uniquely identify hitherto unresolved prolate shapes of superfluid helium droplets. Our results mark the advent of single-shot gas-phase nanoscopy with lab-based short-wavelength pulses and pave the way to ultrafast coherent diffractive imaging with phase-controlled multicolor fields and attosecond pulses.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1610.05997,
title = {Coherent diffractive imaging of single helium nanodroplets with a high harmonic generation source},
author = {Daniela Rupp and Nils Monserud and Bruno Langbehn and Mario Sauppe and Julian Zimmermann and Yevheniy Ovcharenko and Thomas Möller and Fabio Frassetto and Luca Poletto and Andrea Trabattoni and Francesca Calegari and Mauro Nisoli and Katharina Sander and Christian Peltz and Marc J. J. Vrakking and Thomas Fennel and Arnaud Rouzée},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1610.05997},
year = {2017}
}