Conditions for ponderomotive resonances in the Kapitza–Dirac effect

By applying a nonperturbative quantum electrodynamic theory, we study ponderomotive resonances when an electron beam is scattered by a standing photon wave. Our study shows that the ponderomotive parameter u_p, the ponderomotive energy per laser-photon energy, for each of the two traveling laser modes possesses a minimum value ℏω/(mec2). Ponderomotive resonances occur only when the ratio of the laser photon energy to the electron rest-mass energy is a fraction, where the denominator is twice the square of a positive integer and the numerator is the total ponderomotive number, which is also a positive integer.