Collisional redistribution of radiation in strong fields: Modification of the collision dynamics

We extend the theory of light scattering from an atom undergoing collisions to the case of strong laser fields, where the expansion in powers of c that was used formerly in a series of papers by Burnett et al. breaks down. In particular we consider in detail the conditions necessary to relate the observable quantities to intense-field collisional rate constants in a dressed-state basis (such as those calculated by Light and Szöke). We also show (following Rabin and Ben-Reuven) that by studying the spectrum emitted by the atoms in the presence of a strong field one may measure the collisional rates for transfer between the dressed states of atom plus radiation field.