Abstract
The x-ray sources now available are incoherent sources. When they are applied to x-ray diffraction, for example, only the intensity informations are used and phase informations are discarded. Therefore structure determination requires tremendous amount of times for measurements and analyses when the material has low degree of periodicity.
When the x-ray laser, which is a coherent x-ray source, becomes available, the structure of the material even without having any periodicity can be uniquely determined with an x-ray holographic technique.
Present status of x-ray laser development is reviewed in this paper.
