  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 fifth of the
ponderomotive energy.
