Classical dynamics of a charged particle in a laser field beyond the dipole approximation

Abstract

The classical dynamics of a charged particle traveling in a laser field modeled by an elliptically polarized monochromatic electromagnetic plane wave is discussed within the time reparametrization invariant form of the nonrelativistic Hamilton-Jacobi theory. The exact parametric representation for a particle's orbit in an arbitrary plane wave background beyond the dipole approximation and including effect of the magnetic field is derived. For an elliptically polarized monochromatic plane wave the particle's trajectory, as an explicit function of the laboratory frame's time, is given in terms of the Jacobian elliptic functions, whose modulus is proportional to the laser's intensity and depends on the polarization of radiation. It is shown that the system exposes the intensity duality, correspondence between the motion in the backgrounds with various intensities. In virtue of the modular properties of the Jacobian functions, by starting with the representative ``fundamental solution'' and applying a certain modular transformation one can obtain the particle's orbit in the monochromatic plane wave background with arbitrarily prescribed characteristics.