Synchrotrons and X-Ray Free Electron Lasers (part 2) (edX)

This second of two sister courses is pitched at a level to provide valuable insights to a scientifically diverse audience into the broad spectrum of methods that use synchrotrons, including diffraction and elastic scattering; absorption, fluorescence, and photoelectron spectroscopies; and various imaging techniques, including tomography, coherent lensless imaging, and ptychography.

What you’ll learn:

- Elastic scattering and diffraction

- X-ray spectroscopies

- X-ray tomography

- Lensless imaging techniques

Syllabus

Week 1: Diffraction and scattering basics and theory

Introduction, including examples; basic concepts in crystallography, elastic scattering, and diffraction including the phase problem and how this can be resolved. New approaches in macromolecular crystallography, including artificial intelligence/machine learning.

Week 2: Diffraction techniques

Single-crystal diffraction (Laue method and rotation method), powder diffraction, surface diffraction, small-angle x-ray scattering. x-ray reflectometry.

Week 3: Aspects of x-ray spectroscopy theory and absorption spectroscopy

Energy levels, bonding, energy bands, selection rules for dipole transitions, Fermi's Golden rule. Absorption techniques, including XANES, STXM, PEEM, and EXAFS.

Week 4: X-ray emission spectroscopies and electron spectroscopies

X-ray fluorescence, resonant inelastic x-ray scattering, x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy ambient-pressure XPS, x-ray photoelectron diffraction, angle-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy, hard x-ray variants of photoelectron spectroscopies.

Week 5: Tomography and other full-field x-ray microscopies

X-ray tomography basics, including back projections, Radon transforms, and the Fourier slice theorem. Practical considerations. Phase-contrast tomography. Fast tomography. Dark-field and Zernike microscopies.

Week 6: Lensless imaging and x-ray photon correlation spectroscopy

Speckle. coherent x-ray diffractive imaging, ptychographic tomography and laminography. Higher-dimensional imaging. X-ray photon correlation spectroscopy.