Recovering magnetization distributions from their noisy diffraction data

TL;DR

This paper investigates the feasibility of phase retrieval in noisy X-ray diffractive imaging for magnetic materials, proposing a reconstruction algorithm and analyzing its limits under various noise conditions.

Contribution

It introduces a new reconstruction algorithm for magnetization distributions from noisy diffraction data and evaluates its performance and limitations through simulated experiments.

Findings

Reconstruction algorithm effectively recovers magnetization distributions under noise.

Performance varies with photon-shot-noise and charge scattering noise levels.

Defines the experimental conditions for successful diffractive imaging of magnetic samples.

Abstract

We study, using simulated experiments inspired by thin film magnetic domain patterns, the feasibility of phase retrieval in X-ray diffractive imaging in the presence of intrinsic charge scattering given only photon-shot-noise limited diffraction data. We detail a reconstruction algorithm to recover the sample's magnetization distribution under such conditions, and compare its performance with that of Fourier transform holography. Concerning the design of future experiments, we also chart out the reconstruction limits of diffractive imaging when photon- shot-noise and the intensity of charge scattering noise are independently varied. This work is directly relevant to the time-resolved imaging of magnetic dynamics using coherent and ultrafast radiation from X-ray free electron lasers and also to broader classes of diffractive imaging experiments which suffer noisy data, missing data or both.