BNL, Upton, New York, USA
We propose a novel architecture for a mid-IR, high-repetition, kilowatt-class, CO2 laser system operating in a pulse-burst regime and its implementation in In-verse Compton Scattering (ICS) sources of x-ray and gamma-ray radiation. Different types of particle accelerators are considered for conversion to such ICS sources, including energy recovery linacs and synchrotron storage rings. The expected ICS performance parameters are compared with earlier proposals where CBETA and DAΦNE accelerators have been paired with near-IR, mode-locked solid-state lasers operating at a multi-megahertz repetition rate. A considerable increase in acting laser energy attainable in our CO2 laser-based scheme, combined with an order of magnitude higher number of laser photons per Joule of energy allows maintaining a similarly high average flux of produced hard x-rays while the peak flux and brilliance will be raised by three to four orders of magnitude compared to aforementioned schemes based on near-IR lasers.
BNL, Upton, New York, USA
We report an experiment and simulations on post-compression of 2 ps, 0.15 TW CO2 laser pulses to 480 fs, ~0.25 TW by means of a self-phase modulation accompanied by a negative group dispersion in KCl and BaF2 optical slabs. In addition, down to 130 fs fine pulse structure, but at lower conversion efficiency, has been observed through self-compression in a bulk NaCl crystal. The obtained results surpass by far previous achievements in the ultra-fast long-wave IR laser technology