Calculation of Spectral and Angular Characteristics of Nonlinear Compton Scattering of a Laser Pulse

Abstract

We report an investigation of the process of Compton scattering of a plane-wave laser pulse on an electron in the nonlinear regime in the head-on collision geometry. Use is made of the generalized Filon method to calculate numerically the rapidly oscillating integrals that determine the matrix element of the process in the Furry representation. The behavior of the spectral-angular, angular, and spectral distributions of a scattered photon is analyzed as a function of the laser pulse amplitude, duration, polarization, and envelope shape. A new analytical expression for the backscattering spectrum is obtained for a special envelope shape of a circularly polarized pulse.