From a single slit to periodic, modulated, and quasiperiodic crystals – a physical space diffraction analysis of aperiodic systems

Abstract

Using a statistical approach to diffraction analysis, it was shown that the scale of difficulty in the analysis of the diffraction image of a one-dimensional quasicrystal is not significantly different from the analysis of the diffraction image for a single slit. In both cases we get a rectangular probability distribution, for which the Fourier transform leads to analytical expressions on the envelopes of diffraction peaks expressed by means of simple trigonometric functions (sinc). The generalization to 2d (decagonal quasicrystals) and 3d (icosahedral quasicrystals) requires more complex calculations, but conceptually, it does not significantly differ from the calculations for model one-dimensional quasicrystals.