Abstract
Different types of relativistic effects in atomic photoionization are shown to have frequency-dependent onset intensities. These phenomena can be explored analytically with the Strong-Field Approximation (SFA), which becomes accurate without need for rescattering corrections when intensities are high enough to be relativistic. Specially interesting results are that electron spin-flip amplitudes and virtual pair creation become important at intensities often not considered to be relativistic. The stabilization effect wherein transition rates decline with increasing intensity is strongly enhanced by relativity when the laser is linearly polarized. With linearly polarized light, photoelectron spectra exhibit a strong displacement towards the 'hotter' or higher-energy end of the spectrum; and both spectra and total transition rates, if calculated nonrelativistically, can be seriously in error for laser intensities I greater than 1 a.u. at typical intense-laser frequencies.
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