IOQ-Kolloquium / Prof. Dr. Stephan Kuschel (TU Darmstadt)

Diffraction-before-destruction imaging with ultrashort X-ray pulses can visualise nonequilibrium processes, such as chemical reactions, with sub-femtosecond precision in the native environment without the need of crystallization. However, our current resolution in single-shot CDI is limited by the signal strength as higher diffraction order disappear in photon noise. 

This talk will present our recent results published in nature communications (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-56046-y) which demonstrate a way to overcome this limitation by using sub-fs and few-fs x-ray pulses triggering transient resonances. Besides the potential increase of resolution, such resonances are also a path towards element specific imaging. Further the large fluorescence signal allow us to use it for Incoherent diffraction imaging, which we have successfully use to image the few-100-nanometer x-ray focus using only a few 1000 images per reconstructed image. This talk will introduce the concepts and show the results of these attosecond imaging experiments.

The talk will conclude with a brief overview of current and future plans in my recently assumed role in Darmstadt.