Numerical prediction of optical lattice-induced gas heating within multipass optical cavities

Abstract

Direct simulation Monte Carlo was used to investigate the potential of non-resonant optical lattice gas heating in the context of two proposed multipass optical cavity designs. One-dimensional lattices were formed by two 5 ns, 100 mJ, 532 nm simulated laser pulses in the presence of molecular nitrogen. Simulations suggest that these cavity designs are able to facilitate a several fold increases in deposited energy as a result of optical lattice gas heating, with the more efficient of these designs leading to a 14-fold increased temperature change (ΔT ≈ 350 K) for the first ten passes over the single-pass case (ΔT ≈ 25 K).