Scattering in plane-wave backgrounds: infra-red effects and pole structure

Abstract

We consider two aspects of scattering in strong plane wave backgrounds. First, we show that the infra-red divergences in elastic scattering depend on the structure of the background, but can be removed using the usual Bloch-Nordsieck approach. Second, we analyse the infinite series of shifted-mass-shell poles in the particle (Volkov) propagator using lightfront quantisation. The complete series of poles is shown to describe a single, on-shell, propagating particle.

12 pages, 4 figures. References added, typos corrected