Autoholography and possibility of direct phase measurement in X-ray diffraction analysis

A method for direct experimental measurement of phases of scattered waves in X-ray diffraction analysis has been proposed. To determine these phases, an unconventional holographic exposure technique (hereinafter, “autoholography”) is used, wherein a beam scattering on an object completely identical to the one being investigated, but spatially shifted and rotated in a certain manner relative to the latter, is used as a reference beam. In principle, autoholography method does not require a very high coherence of the radiation beams used since the reference beam allows to compensate for its absence to a certain extent in this case. Therefore, X-ray radiation used for X-ray diffraction analysis is also perfectly suitable for the autoholography.