Differential near-edge coherent diffractive imaging using a femtosecond high-harmonic XUV light source.

Element-specific contrast enhancement in tabletop coherent diffractive imaging (CDI) is demonstrated by employing an ultrafast extreme ultraviolet (XUV) light source with tunable photon energy. By combining two measurements performed at energies below and above the Al L(2,3) absorption edge, the spatial autocorrelation function of a micron-scale double pinhole in a 300 nm thick aluminum foil is retrieved despite a dominant background signal from directly transmitted light across the entire range of detectable diffraction angles. The fringe visibility in the diffraction patterns is 0 below the Al L(2,3) edge, 0.53 ± 0.06 above the edge, and 0.73 ± 0.08 in the differential image that combines the two measurements. The proof-of-principle experiment demonstrates that the variations of XUV optical constants in the vicinity of an inner-shell absorption edge can be utilized to improve the chemical sensitivity and image reconstruction quality of laboratory-based ultrafast imaging experiments.