The Helmholtz Beamline at XFEL - Probing solid density laser-plasma physics with XFELs on the femtosecond scale

We show that probing the ionization evolution and plasma dynamics in high power laser interaction with matter on the femtosecond and nanometer scale is in reach with state of the art X-ray lasers at facilities such as LCLS, SACLA and the European XFEL.
We have conducted particle-in-cell simulations including radiative and collisional atomic processes to generate absolute predictions for synthetic scattering images using SAXS and RCXDI techniques. We could show that plasma dynamics from the target front side and bulk can be distinguished and plasma instabilities identified and their development could be temporarily involved. Inclduing atomic physics models from SCFly we could furthermore show that the temporal evolution of the ionization dynamics can be probed by resonant scattering.