Coherent diffraction of a single virus particle: The impact of a water layer on the available orientational information

Coherent diffractive imaging using x-ray free-electron lasers (XFELs) may provide a unique opportunity for high-resolution structural analysis of single particles sprayed from an aqueous solution into the laser beam. As a result, diffraction images are measured from randomly oriented objects covered by a water layer. We analyze theoretically how the thickness of the covering water layer influences the structural and orientational information contained in the recorded diffraction images. This study has implications for planned experiments on single-particle imaging with XFELs.