Coherent Diffraction Imaging of magnetic nanostructures using table-top and facility scale EUV/X-ray sources*

The advent of materials with complex nanoscale magnetic textures stemming from geometric frustration, careful tuning of the Dzyaloshinskii–Moriya interaction, or direct light-induced manipulation of spins, etc., has opened up exciting avenues of research both into the fundamental physics of these systems and into their potential applications. Understanding the dynamics and structure of nanoscale spin textures requires techniques with femtosecond temporal resolution, nanometer spatial resolution, and magnetic contrast. Because of their small size and low contrast, intricate nanoscale magnetic textures have proven difficult to image directly in 3D without prior knowledge of the sample. Correlative multi-modal spectro-microscopy using complementary nanoscale imaging and spectroscopic techniques at both the tabletop and facility scale provides access to a more complete range of elemental, chemical, electronic, magnetic, structural, and dynamic properties of complex samples. For example, by combining the element-specific magnetic contrast of resonant x-ray magnetic circular dichroism with the exquisite spatial and temporal resolution and phase-contrast of x-ray ptychography, and incorporating vector-tomographic reconstruction algorithms we comprehensively characterize complex magnetic, nanostructured, layered, and heterogeneous samples.