Laser-induced alignment of particles and molecules was long envisioned to support three-dimensional structure determination using “single-molecule diffraction” with X-ray free-electron lasers [PRL 92, 198102 (2004)]. However, the alignment of isolated macromolecules has not yet been demonstrated also because quantitative modeling is very expensive. We computationally demonstrated that the alignment of nanorods and proteins is possible with a standard laser technology. We performed a comprehensive analysis on the dependence of the degree of alignment on molecular properties and experimental details, e.g., particle temperature and laser-pulse energy. Considering the polarizability anisotropy of about 150,000 proteins, our analysis revealed that most of these proteins can be aligned using realistic experimental parameters.

中文翻译：

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纳米颗粒和大分子的激光诱导对准在相干衍射成像中的应用


长期以来，人们一直设想使用X射线自由电子激光器的“单分子衍射”进行粒子和分子的激光诱导对准[PRL 92， 198102 （2004）]。然而，分离的大分子的比对尚未得到证明，因为定量建模非常昂贵。我们通过计算证明，使用标准激光技术可以实现纳米棒和蛋白质的对准。我们对对准度对分子性质和实验细节（例如粒子温度和激光脉冲能量）的依赖性进行了全面分析。考虑到大约 150,000 种蛋白质的极化各向异性，我们的分析表明，这些蛋白质中的大多数可以使用实际的实验参数进行比对。