Quantized form factor shift in the presence of free electron laser radiation

¹ Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Instituto de Ciências Exatas, Departamento de Física 31270-901 Belo Horizonte, MG, Brasil
² Department of Physics, University of Oulu - Fin-90014 Oulu, Finland
³ Institut Néel- CNRS - BP 166, 25 rue des Martyrs, F-38042 Grenoble Cedex 9, France
⁴ Physikalisches Institut, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg - D-69120 Heidelberg, Germany
⁵ Max-Planck-Institut für Physik komplexer Systeme - D-01187 Dresden, Germany
⁶ Centro de Física Atómica, Departamento de Física, Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia, FCT, Universidade Nova de Lisboa - P-2829-516 Caparica, Portugal

^(a) fratini.filippo@gmail.com
ffratini@fisica.ufmg.br

Received: 16 March 2014
Accepted: 13 June 2014

Abstract

In electron scattering, the target form factors contribute significantly to the diffraction pattern and carry information on the target electromagnetic charge distribution. Here we show that the presence of electromagnetic radiation, as intense as currently available in free electron lasers, shifts the dependence of the target form factors by a quantity that depends on the number of photons absorbed or emitted by the electron as well as on the parameters of the electromagnetic radiation. As example, we show the impact of intense ultraviolet and soft X-ray radiation on elastic electron scattering by the Ne-like argon ion and by the xenon atom. We find that the shift brought by the radiation to the form factor is of the order of some percent. Our results may open up a new avenue to explore matter with the assistance of laser.