  Electron-argon scattering in the presence of a linearly polarized, low
frequency laser field is studied theoretically. The scattering geometries of
interest are small angles where momentum transfer is nearly perpendicular to
the field, which is where the Kroll-Watson approximation has the potential to
break down. The Floquet R matrix method solves the velocity gauge Schr\"odinger
equation, using a larger reaction volume than previous treatments in order to
carefully assess the importance of the long range polarization potential to the
cross section. A comparison of the cross sections calculated with the target
potential fully included inside 20 and 100 a.u. shows no appreciable
differences, which demonstrates that the long range interaction can not account
for the high cross sections measured in experiments.
