Effect of distorted illumination waves on coherent diffraction microscopy

Coherent diffraction microscopy requires a well-defined illumination wave such as a plane wave on a specimen. Experimentally, a small pinhole or a focused beam is often used to reduce the illumination area but they unavoidably distort the waves. The distortion of the illumination wave causes artifacts in the phase retrieval of oversampled diffraction patterns. Using computer simulations, we searched for the conditions where strong artifacts arise by changing the Fresnel number, pinhole size, alignment error and photon statistics. The experimental setup with Fresnel number of around 1 and smaller than 1 realized a small reconstruction error when the pinhole radius is larger than a few times the specimen size. These conditions are suitable for the rotation of specimens for the three-dimensional 3D observations. Such investigation will have an impact in the design of coherent diffraction microscopes for the 3D characterization of nanoscale materials and biological systems using the third generation synchrotron radiation and future x-ray free-electron lasers. © 2005 American Institute of Physics. DOI: 10.1063/1.2149499