Limits on collective X-ray scattering imposed by coherence

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, University of California P.O. Box 808, CA 94551, USA

Received: 1 December 2005
Accepted: 17 March 2006

Abstract

We present the calculation of the threshold for observation of collective plasmon modes in a solid density plasma probed with a partially coherent X-ray source. We find that at lower electron densities () de-coherence effects pose a stringent limit to the effective divergence as well as bandwidth of the probe source. These results are more restrictive than the usual condition that the probed scale-length must be larger than the screening distance in the plasma.