Laser-assisted free-free transition in electron-atom collisions

The free-free transition is studied for an electron-hydrogen atom system in the ground state at very low incident energies in the presence of an external homogeneous, monochromatic, and linearly polarized laser field. The incident electron is considered to be dressed by the laser field in a nonperturbative manner by choosing the Volkov solutions in both the initial and final channels. The space part of the scattering wave function for the electron is solved numerically by taking into account the effect of electron-exchange interactions, short-range interactions, as well as of long-range interactions. The laser-assisted differential as well as total elastic cross sections are calculated for single-photon absorption or emission in the soft photon limit, the laser intensity being much less than the atomic field intensity. A strong suppression is noted in the laser-assisted cross sections as compared to the field-free situations. A significant difference is noted in the singlet and the triplet cross sections.