Ellipticity dependence of plateau structures in atomic and molecular processes in a strong laser field

In this paper, we present a quantum-mechanical theory in order to describe laser-induced and laser-assisted atomic and molecular processes with an emphasis on an elliptically polarized strong laser field. The features of the high-energy regions of spectra and their cutoffs are analyzed in detail for different values of ellipticity, laser intensities and various atomic and molecular species. Our theoretical study is focused on the ellipticity dependence of the plateau structures that appear in the energy spectra of atomic and molecular processes in strong laser fields. (paper)