A Molecular Ballet under the X-ray Laser

An international team of researchers has used the world’s most powerful X-ray laser to take snapshots of free molecules. 

The research team headed by Prof. Jochen Küpper of the Hamburg Center for Free-Electron Laser Science (CFEL) choreographed a kind of molecular ballet in the X-ray beam. 

With this work, the researchers have cleared important hurdles on the way to X-ray images of individual molecules, as they explain in the scientific journal Physical Review Letters. 

CFEL is a cooperation of DESY, the University of Hamburg, and the Max Planck Society.

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The molecules (green stream) enter the test chamber with random orientation and are forced to all take up the same pose by an optical laser (red). A bright X-ray flash (blue) produces a diffraction image (upper right) that contains structural information about the molecule. Credit: Stephan Stern/CFEL