Ultrafast, ultrabright, X-ray holography using a uniformly-redundant   array
  Advances in the development of free-electron lasers offer the realistic prospect of high-resolution imaging to study the nanoworld on the time-scale of atomic motions. We identify X-ray Fourier Transform holography, (FTH) as a promising but, so far, inefficient scheme to do this. We show that a uniformly redundant array (URA) placed next to the sample, multiplies the efficiency of X-ray FTH by more than one thousand (approaching that of a perfect lens) and provides holographic images with both amplitude- and phase-contrast information. The experiments reported here demonstrate this concept by imaging a nano-fabricated object at a synchrotron source, and a bacterial cell at a soft X-ray free-electron-laser, where illumination by a single 15 fs pulse was successfully used in producing the holographic image. We expect with upcoming hard X-ray lasers to achieve considerably higher spatial resolution and to obtain ultrafast movies of excited states of matter. 
S. Marchesini, S. Boutet, A. E. Sakdinawat, M. J. Bogan, S. Bajt, A.   Barty, H. N. Chapman, M. Frank, S. P. Hau-Riege, A. S...