Atomic String Holography

A new diffraction-channeling effect has been discovered, in which Kikuchi or channeling line patterns formed by high energy electrons, neutrons, and positrons are shown to break up into a series of annular disks if the crystal thickness traversed by the beam is small. The disks may be interpreted as Gabor in-line holograms of strings of atoms projected along the beam path. For electrons or positrons the patterns may be detected with little background by detecting characteristic x-ray emission from a thin film as a function of the diffraction conditions of a collimated, ionizing, high energy beam. Uses of the effect for structure determination and atomic-resolution lensless imaging are suggested.