Demonstration of an optical enhancement cavity with 10 micron wavelength

Abstract

We have been developing a pulsed-laser optical enhancement cavity for laser-Compton scattering (LCS). LCS can produce high brightness X-ray through the collision between relativistic electrons generated from the accelerator and high power laser photons with a compact facility. In order to increase the number of collisions/sec, high repetition rate accelerator and laser are required. For the laser system, an optical enhancement cavity is the most powerful tool for LCS, thus we have been developing the cavity for storing 1 micron laser pulse. On the other hand, the resulting X-ray energy can be changed by the collision laser wavelength. If we have another optical cavity with different wavelength, the multicolor, quasi-monochromatic, high brightness and compact X-ray source can be realized. Therefore, we started to develop an optical cavity at 10 micron wavelength with CO2 laser. At this wavelength region, the absorption loss is dominant compared with scattering loss. Thus we carefully chose the optical mirrors for enhancement cavity. We demonstrated a more than 200 enhancement factor with 795 finesse optical cavity at 10 micron CO2 laser. Moreover, 2.3 kW storage in the optical cavity was successfully demonstrated. The design of optical cavity, first experimental results and future prospects will be presented at the conference.