Thomson scattering in the high intensity regime

Within the framework of classical electrodynamics, we investigate the scattering of a very intense laser pulse on ultrarelativistic electrons. The laser pulse is modeled by a plane wave of finite length. For a circularly polarized laser pulse, we focus on the angular distribution of the emitted radiation in its dependence on the electron energy for the cases of head-on and 90 deg. collisions. We investigate the relation between dW/dΩ and the trajectory followed by the velocity of the electron during the laser pulse; for the case of a short laser pulse, we discuss the carrier-envelope phase effects. We also present an analysis of the polarization of emitted radiation. We present two scaling laws that allow us to predict the behavior of angular distributions for a broad range of parameters.