Dichroism in high energy electron-hydrogen scattering in an elliptically polarized laser field

We consider electron-hydrogen scattering in an elliptically polarized laser field. The electrons are sufficiently energetic so that the scattering pro cess can be treated in the first order Born approximation. The effect of el liptic dichroism in the angular distribution of the scattered electrons for small Values N of emitted or absorbed laser photons is considered as a fun ction of the ellipticity xi of the laser field for a fixed scattering angle a as a function of the azimuthal angle psi. For electrons of high energy, dichroism can only be observed when the laser-dressing of the atomic target is taken into account in second order time-dependent perturbation theory p ermitting virtual bound-continuum transitions. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B. V. All rights reserved.