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We introduce soft recollisions in laser-matter interaction. They are characterized by the electron missing the ion upon recollision in contrast to the well-known head-on collisions responsible for high-harmonic generation or above-threshold ionization. We demonstrate analytically that soft recollisions can cause a bunching of photo-electron energies through which a series of low-energy peaks emerges in the electron yield along the laser polarization axis. This peak sequence is universal, it does not depend on the binding potential, and is found below an excess energy of one tenth of the ponderomotive energy. Furthermore we show that this series could be uncovered experimentally by use of few-cycle pulses with increasing duration.
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