Electron diffraction

Electron diffraction is interference between scattered Electron probability amplitudes. It connects the de Broglie wavelength of the incident beam to the arrangement of the scattering material. In elastic scattering from a fixed crystal, $|{\mathbf{k}}_{\mathrm{out}}|=|{\mathbf{k}}_{\mathrm{in}}|=2\pi /\lambda$, and constructive crystal scattering selects wavevector transfers $\mathbf{Q}={\mathbf{k}}_{\mathrm{out}}-{\mathbf{k}}_{\mathrm{in}}$ in the reciprocal lattice. The physical momentum transfer to the Electron is $\hslash \mathbf{Q}$ in this convention.

Bragg's law expresses the same condition as $2d\sin {\theta }_B=n\lambda$, where $d$ is the spacing of the chosen lattice planes, $n$ the diffraction order, and ${\theta }_B$ the angle to those planes. The angle between incoming and outgoing propagation directions is $\chi =2{\theta }_B$ for that reflection geometry. In normal-incidence backscattering, a detector's angle $\varphi$ from the outward surface normal instead gives $\chi =\pi -\varphi$; neither detector colatitude nor angle to the surface normal should silently replace ${\theta }_B$. A finite-row electron diffraction model uses a different spacing, the spacing between sites along a surface row, and makes that distinction explicit.