Nonlinear Absorption of X-ray Free Electron Laser Pulses in Dense Aluminum Plasmas*

XFEL provides unique opportunities to generate and investigate dense plasmas. Here, we present the intensity dependent, nonlinear x-ray absorption in dense aluminum target using the collisional-radiative population kinetic calculations. With high peak intensity of XFEL pulses, even below K-absorption edge, x-ray photons could create excited states of which absorption is larger than the ground state absorption. At the resonant energy of neutral atom, increasing x-ray absorption in the intensity range of 1016\textasciitilde 17 W/cm2 has been observed, and it is the reverse saturable absorption in the x-ray regime. The similar observations have been also made at the other resonant energies of higher charge states. At even higher XFEL intensities, bleaching a specific charge state could lead a transition from reverse saturable absorption to saturable absorption, so thus x-ray absorption is decreasing. Detailed population kinetics of charge states relevant to the absorption of x-ray photons, and fast modulation of XFEL spectrum will be discussed.