In wide-angle scattering (WAXS), one cannot simply assume that the detector plane is orthogonal to the incident x-ray beam. Converting from detector pixel coordinates to 3D q-vector is not always trivial, and depends on the experimental geometry.
Area Detector on Goniometer Arm
Consider a 2D (area) detector connected to a goniometer arm. The goniometer has a center of rotation at the center of the sample (i.e. the incident beam passes through this center, and scattered rays originate from this point also). Let
be the in-plane angle of the goniometer arm (rotation about Failed to parse (MathML with SVG or PNG fallback (recommended for modern browsers and accessibility tools): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/":): {\displaystyle \scriptstyle z }
-axis), and
be the elevation angle (rotation away from
plane and towards
axis).
The final scattering vector depends on:
: Pixel position on detector (horizontal).
: Pixel position on detector (vertical).
: Sample-detector distance.
: Elevation angle of detector.
: In-plane angle of detector.
Note that
and
are defined relative to the direct-beam. That is, for
and
, the direct beam is at position
on the area detector.
Central Point
The point
can be thought of in terms of a vector that points from the source-of-scattering (center of goniometer rotation) to the detector:

This vector is then rotated about the
-axis by
:

And then rotated about the
-axis by
:

The point
on the detector probes the total scattering angle
, which is simply the angle between
and
:
- Failed to parse (MathML with SVG or PNG fallback (recommended for modern browsers and accessibility tools): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/":): {\displaystyle \begin{alignat}{2} \cos \Theta & = \frac{ \mathbf{v}_i \cdot \mathbf{v}_f }{ \left\| \mathbf{v}_i \right\| \left\| \mathbf{v}_f \right\|} \\ & = \cos \phi_g \cos \theta_g \\ 2 \theta_s & = \arccos \left[ \cos \phi_g \cos \theta_g \right] \end{alignat} }
Thus:

See Also