Backscattering of laser radiation on ultrarelativistic electrons in a transverse magnetic field: evidence of MeV-scale photon interference

Phys Rev Lett. 2013 Apr 5;110(14):140402. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.110.140402. Epub 2013 Apr 2.

Abstract

In this Letter we report an observation of interference effects in Compton scattering in the experiment held on the VEPP-2000 collider. Infrared laser radiation was scattered head-on the 990 MeV electrons inside the dipole magnet, where an electron orbit radius is about 140 cm. It was observed that the energy spectrum of backscattered photons, measured by a HPGe detector, differs from that defined by the Klein-Nishina cross section and scattering kinematics of free electrons. The explanation of the effect, proposed in terms of classical electrodynamics, is in agreement with QED calculations.