  When waves damp or amplify on resonant particles in a plasma, the nonresonant
particles experience a recoil force that conserves the total momentum between
the particles and electromagnetic fields. This force is important to
understand, as it can completely negate current drive and rotation drive
mechanisms that are predicted on the basis of only the resonant particles.
Here, the existing electrostatic theory of this recoil force is extended to
electromagnetic waves. While the result bears close similarity to historical
fluid theories of laser-plasma interactions, it now incorporates both resonant
and nonresonant particles, allowing momentum conservation to be
self-consistently proven. Furthermore, the result is shown to be generally
valid for kinetic plasmas, which is verified through single-particle hot-plasma
simulations. The new form of the force provides physical insight into the
nature of the generalized Minkowski (plasmon) momentum of geometrical optics,
which is shown to correspond to the momentum gained by the field and
nonresonant particles as the wave is self-consistently ramped up from vanishing
amplitude.
