Serafini, L. Bacci, A. Curatolo, C. Drebot, I. Petrillo, V. Puppin, A. Rossetti Conti, M. Samsam, S. JACoW Publishing Geneva, Switzerland 2673-7035 978-3-95450-224-0 10.18429/JACoW-FLS2023-TU4P11 English 95-98 electron photon scattering radiation plasma Contribution to a conference proceedings 2024 2024-01 https://doi.org/10.18429/JACoW-FLS2023-TU4P11 http://jacow.org/fls2023/papers/tu4p11.pdf We analyze the transition between Compton Scattering and Inverse Compton Scattering (ICS), characterized by an equal exchange of energy and momentum between the colliding particles (electrons and photons). In this Symmetric Compton Scattering (SCS) regime, the energy-angle correlation of scattered photons is cancelled, and, when the electron recoil is large, monochromaticity is transferred from one colliding beam to the other. Large-recoil SCS or quasi-SCS can be used to design compact intrinsic monochromatic γ-ray sources based on compact linacs, thus avoiding the use of GeV-class electron beams and powerful laser/optical systems as required for ICS sources. At very low recoil and energy collisions (about 10 keV energy range), SCS can be exploited to heat the colliding electron beam, which is scattered with large transverse momenta over the entire solid angle, offering a technique to trap electrons into magnetic bottles for plasma heating.