Femtosecond X-ray cross-correlation analysis of disordered crystals forming in a supercooled atomic liquid

We demonstrate an advanced scattering method for accessing the 3D reciprocal space of crystalline structures forming in a rapidly supercooled noble-gas liquid using a combination of femtosecond X-ray diffraction and X-ray cross-correlation analysis. The preservation of angular information from the scattering signal allows probing the structure factor along selected directions in reciprocal space and identifying signatures undetectable in azimuthally integrated scattering curves. Therefore, more information from serial diffraction experiments on stochastic crystallization processes can be retrieved despite the inherent variation of the crystal orientation and morphology for each single probe. We also demonstrate how different features in the correlation maps can be associated with certain forms of stacking faults, which enables studying such defects in situ and disentangling them from simultaneous changes in crystal size and temperature.