Collision of electrons with laser photons in a background potential

Abstract

Electron-photon scattering in presence of a background potential is considered for arbitrary intensities of laser radiations. Cross sectional expressions are derived which automatically include the effect of the background on the electron states. If the electron states are approximated by plane waves, they are shown to reproduce the results given by previous authors. An explicit result for the total elastic cross section in the combined laser pulse Coulomb field, is given. A simple upperbound is obtained for the corresponding bremsstrahlung (inverse bremsstrahlung) cross sections.