The rotating-crystal method in femtosecond X-ray diffraction

We report the first implementation of the rotating-crystal method in femtosecond X-ray diffraction. Applying a pump-probe scheme with 100 fs hard X-ray probe pulses from a laser-driven plasma source, the novel technique is demonstrated by mapping structural dynamics of a photoexcited bismuth crystal via changes of the diffracted intensity on a multitude of Bragg reflections. The method is compared to femtosecond powder diffraction and to Bragg diffraction from a crystal with stationary orientation. (c) 2011 Optical Society of America