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Caleman, Carl

Publications and source records attributed to Caleman, Carl.

At least 19 records
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2023

Speckle contrast of interfering fluorescence X-rays

With the development of X-ray free-electron lasers (XFELs), producing pulses of femtosecond durations comparable with the coherence times of X-ray fluorescence, it has become possible to observe intensity–intensity correlations due to the interference of emission from independent atoms. This has been used to compare durations of X-ray pulses and to measure the size of a focused X-ray beam, for example. Here it is shown that it is also possible to observe the interference of fluorescence photons through the measurement of the speckle contrast of angle-resolved fluorescence patterns. Speckle contrast is often used as a measure of the degree of coherence of the incident beam or the fluctuations of the illuminated sample as determined from X-ray diffraction patterns formed by elastic scattering, rather than from fluorescence patterns as addressed here. Commonly used approaches to estimate speckle contrast were found to suffer when applied to XFEL-generated fluorescence patterns due to low photon counts and a significant variation of the excitation pulse energy from shot to shot. A new method to reliably estimate speckle contrast under such conditions, using a weighting scheme, is introduced. The method is demonstrated by comparing the speckle contrast of fluorescence observed with pulses of 3 fs to 15 fs duration.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2022

Observations of phase changes in monoolein during high viscous injection

Serial crystallography of membrane proteins often employs high-viscosity injectors (HVIs) to deliver micrometre-sized crystals to the X-ray beam. Typically, the carrier medium is a lipidic cubic phase (LCP) media, which can also be used to nucleate and grow the crystals. However, despite the fact that the LCP is widely used with HVIs, the potential impact of the injection process on the LCP structure has not been reported and hence is not yet well understood. The self-assembled structure of the LCP can be affected by pressure, dehydration and temperature changes, all of which occur during continuous flow injection. These changes to the LCP structure may in turn impact the results of X-ray diffraction measurements from membrane protein crystals. To investigate the influence of HVIs on the structure of the LCP we conducted a study of the phase changes in monoolein/water and monoolein/buffer mixtures during continuous flow injection, at both atmospheric pressure and under vacuum. The reservoir pressure in the HVI was tracked to determine if there is any correlation with the phase behaviour of the LCP. The results indicated that, even though the reservoir pressure underwent (at times) significant variation, this did not appear to correlate with observed phase changes in the sample stream or correspond to shifts in the LCP lattice parameter. During vacuum injection, there was a three-way coexistence of the gyroid cubic phase, diamond cubic phase and lamellar phase. During injection at atmospheric pressure, the coexistence of a cubic phase and lamellar phase in the monoolein/water mixtures was also observed. The degree to which the lamellar phase is formed was found to be strongly dependent on the co-flowing gas conditions used to stabilize the LCP stream. A combination of laboratory-based optical polarization microscopy and simulation studies was used to investigate these observations.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2018

FreeDam – A webtool for free-electron laser-induced damage in femtosecond X-ray crystallography

Over the last decade X-ray free-electron laser (XFEL) sources have been made available to the scientific community. One of the most successful uses of these new machines has been protein crystallography. When samples are exposed to the intense short X-ray pulses provided by the XFELs, the sample quickly becomes highly ionized and the atomic structure is affected. Here we present a webtool dubbed FreeDam based on non-thermal plasma simulations, for estimation of radiation damage in free-electron laser experiments in terms of ionization, temperatures and atomic displacements. The aim is to make this tool easily accessible to scientists who are planning and performing experiments at XFELs.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2015

Towards phasing using high X-ray intensity

X-ray free-electron lasers (XFELs) show great promise for macromolecular structure determination from sub-micrometre-sized crystals, using the emerging method of serial femtosecond crystallography. The extreme brightness of the XFEL radiation can multiply ionize most, if not all, atoms in a protein, causing their scattering factors to change during the pulse, with a preferential `bleaching' of heavy atoms. This paper investigates the effects of electronic damage on experimental data collected from a Gd derivative of lysozyme microcrystals at different X-ray intensities, and the degree of ionization of Gd atoms is quantified from phased difference Fourier maps. In conclusion, a pattern sorting scheme is proposed to maximize the ionization contrast and the way in which the local electronic damage can be used for a new experimental phasing method is discussed.

74 ATOMIC AND MOLECULAR PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2015

Simulations of radiation damage as a function of the temporal pulse profile in femtosecond X-ray protein crystallography

Serial femtosecond X-ray crystallography of protein nanocrystals using ultrashort and intense pulses from an X-ray free-electron laser has proved to be a successful method for structural determination. However, due to significant variations in diffraction pattern quality from pulse to pulse only a fraction of the collected frames can be used. Experimentally, the X-ray temporal pulse profile is not known and can vary with every shot. This simulation study describes how the pulse shape affects the damage dynamics, which ultimately affects the biological interpretation of electron density. The instantaneously detected signal varies during the pulse exposure due to the pulse properties, as well as the structural and electronic changes in the sample. Here ionization and atomic motion are simulated using a radiation transfer plasma code. Pulses with parameters typical for X-ray free-electron lasers are considered: pulse energies ranging from 10 4 to 10 7 J cm -2 with photon energies from 2 to 12 keV, up to 100 fs long. Radiation damage in the form of sample heating that will lead to a loss of crystalline periodicity and changes in scattering factor due to electronic reconfigurations of ionized atoms are considered here. The simulations show differences in the dynamics of the radiation damage processes for different temporal pulse profiles and intensities, where ionization or atomic motion could be predominant. Overall, the different dynamics influence the recorded diffracted signal in any given resolution and will affect the subsequent structure determination.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2015

Ultrafast self-gating Bragg diffraction of exploding nanocrystals in an X-ray laser

In structural determination of crystalline proteins using intense femtosecond X-ray lasers, damage processes lead to loss of structural coherence during the exposure. We use a nonthermal description for the damage dynamics to calculate the ultrafast ionization and the subsequent atomic displacement. These effects degrade the Bragg diffraction on femtosecond time scales and gate the ultrafast imaging. This process is intensity and resolution dependent. At high intensities the signal is gated by the ionization affecting low resolution information first. At lower intensities, atomic displacement dominates the loss of coherence affecting high-resolution information. We find that pulse length is not a limiting factor as long as there is a high enough X-ray flux to measure a diffracted signal.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗