Electrons in an eccentric background field

Abstract

We present a description of electrons propagating in an elliptically polarised plane wave background which includes circular and linear polarisations as special cases. We calculate to all orders in the background field the two point function and relate it to various expressions found in the literature. The background field induced mass shift of the electron is shown to be polarisation independent in the full elliptic class. The matrix nature of this mass shift in the fermionic theory is discussed. The extent to which a momentum space description is possible for this system is clarified.

Comments: 17 pages Title changed in journal. Some references added