- Ma, Lingyu;
- Goff, Nathan;
- Carrascosa, Andrés Moreno;
- Nelson, Silke;
- Liang, Mengning;
- Cheng, Xinxin;
- Yong, Haiwang;
- Gabalski, Ian;
- Huang, Lisa;
- Crane, Stuart W;
- Green, Alice E;
- Allum, Felix;
- Lenzen, Philipp;
- Muvva, Sri Bhavya;
- Heald, Lauren F;
- Liu, Yusong;
- Bhattacharyya, Surjendu;
- Larsen, Kirk A;
- Graßl, Martin;
- Forbes, Ruaridh;
- Centurion, Martin;
- Wolf, Thomas JA;
- Kirrander, Adam;
- Minitti, Michael P;
- Weber, Peter M
Advances in x-ray free electron lasers have made ultrafast scattering a powerful method for investigating molecular reaction kinetics and dynamics. Accurate measurement of the ground-state, static scattering signals of the reacting molecules is pivotal for these pump-probe x-ray scattering experiments as they are the cornerstone for interpreting the observed structural dynamics. This article presents a data calibration procedure, designed for gas-phase x-ray scattering experiments conducted at the Linac Coherent Light Source x-ray Free-Electron Laser at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, that makes it possible to derive a quantitative dependence of the scattering signal on the scattering vector. A self-calibration algorithm that optimizes the detector position without reference to a computed pattern is introduced. Angle-of-scattering corrections that account for several small experimental non-idealities are reported. Their implementation leads to near quantitative agreement with theoretical scattering patterns calculated with ab-initio methods as illustrated for two x-ray photon energies and several molecular test systems.