When Structural Noise is Signal: Fluctuations, Correlations, and Coherence
Paul M. Voyles
Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Finding small meaningful structural signals against a large inherent background of structural "noise" is a problem in characterizing both amorphous materials and artificial nanostructures inside some encapsulating material. Our approach is to amass many electron nanodiffraction measurements, then study their statistical distribution as a way to access three- and four-body atomic position correlation functions. A similar approach using FEL light focused into a small probe might fruitfully address problems in amorphous or semi-crystalline organic molecules including polymers and pharmaceuticals.
