Correlation effects in electron-ion collisions in a strong laser field

We examine elastic and inelastic scattering of electrons by ions in intense laser light. A method of numerical investigation of the scattering charact eristics based on regularizing the Coulomb singularity is proposed. We show that over a broad range of parameter values the transport scattering cross section is weakly dependent on the intensity of the high-frequency field. We detect a significant modification of the dependence of the effective ine lastic scattering cross section. We also show that the energy exchange with the field is determined by a fairly small group of electrons, called the r epresentative electrons. Finally, we propose a qualitative model that expla ins our results by the fact that the leading contribution is provided by in elastic collisions of electrons with relatively small impact parameters tra versing the region important for the interaction at large angles. (C) 1999 American Institute of Physics.