New light on disordered ensembles: ab initio structure determination of one particle from scattering fluctuations of many copies

Phys Rev Lett. 2011 Mar 18;106(11):115501. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.106.115501. Epub 2011 Mar 14.

Abstract

We report on the first experimental ab initio reconstruction of an image of a single particle from fluctuations in the scattering from an ensemble of copies, randomly oriented about an axis. The method is applicable to identical particles frozen in space or time (as by snapshot diffraction from an x-ray free electron laser). These fluctuations enhance information obtainable from an experiment such as conventional small angle x-ray scattering.