Reconstruction of the Electron Density of Molecules with Single-Axis Alignment

Diffraction from the individual molecules of a molecular beam, aligned parallel to a single axis by a strong electric field or other means, has been proposed as a means of structure determination of individual molecules. As in fiber diffraction, all the information extractable is contained in a diffraction pattern from incidence of the diffracting beam normal to the molecular alignment axis. We present two methods of structure solution for this case. One is based on the iterative projection algorithms for phase retrieval applied to the coefficients of the cylindrical harmonic expansion of the molecular electron density. Another is the holographic approach utilizing presence of the strongly scattering reference atom for a specific molecule.