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short communications
Measurement of X-ray intensities, using a solid-state detector and with pulse-height discrimination to select the characteristic wavelength, has shown that the low-angle reflections can be seriously overestimated for crystals with moderate to large mosaic spread. This is a result of the effects of mosaic spread masking the contribution of white radiation in the reflections. It is thought that similar difficulties could arise with crystal monochromators that reflect a narrow band of wavelengths of white radiation along with the characteristic line, and with balanced filters where the pass band can be quite narrow.