CONSIDERATIONS IN THE CHOICE OF A WAVELENGTH RANGE FOR WHITE-BEAM LAUE DIFFRACTION

The white-beam Laue-diffraction method is a useful tool for rapid measurement of crystallographic intensities with synchrotron radiation. Considerations of the signal-to-noise ratio to be expected from scattering of X-rays within a limited wavelength range suggest that it will pay to limit that range to something like an octave. This rule-of-thumb has the added advantage that there will be significantly fewer diffraction spots that are overlapping harmonics of one another. To maximize the number of reflections recorded in a single stationary-crystal exposure, one should choose this octave of wavelengths in a region where the curvature of the Ewald sphere is greatest, that is at the longest wavelength allowable after other considerations are taken into account.