High Power Picosecond Laser Pulse Recirculation for Compton Scattering

Gamma-ray generation by Compton back-scattering laser photons off a relativistic electron beam suffers from a small Thomson cross-section. Recirculating unused laser photons can increase the average gamma-ray flux. Traditional approaches to laser recirculation rely on either resonant coupling of a low-energy pulse train to a cavity or active pulse switching using a pockels cell. Our alternative, passive approach does not require interferometeric alignment accuracy and is compatible with ultrashort, high peak power pulses. Pulse injection is achieved by a thin frequency converter inside the cavity in the path of the incident beam. The cavity consists of dichroic mirrors that transmit the incident but reflect the frequency-converted light. Initial modeling and experiments predict better than 20~times increase in the average brightness of Compton back-scattering sources with our pulse recirculation method.