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 (ne≲2 × 1023 cm−3) 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.