Structure determination from intensity measurements in scattering experiments

Abstract

The problem of determining a scattering potential from measurements of the far-field intensity distribution obtained in a set of scattering experiments is addressed within the Born approximation. It is shown that this problem admits a conceptually and computationally simple approximate solution if the incident and scattered radiation are mutually coherent in the far field and if the spatial resolution at which the far-field distribution of total intensity is measured is sufficiently high. The resolution of the inversion procedure is discussed and a computer simulation illustrating the proposed method is presented.