Circularly polarized laser field-induced rescattering plateaus in electron-atom scattering

We analyze the laser ellipticity dependence of n-photon differential cross sections (dσn/dΩ) for electron-atom scattering in an intense elliptically polarized laser field. We show that there exist two plateau-like structures in the dependence of dσn/dΩ on n for any ellipticity, including for the case of circular polarization. We present numerical predictions for e-H scattering in a CO2-laser field and an analytical description of the plateau features in terms of the rescattering scenario.