Bessel-Gauss beam enhancement cavities for high-intensity applications

We introduce Bessel-Gauss beam enhancement cavities that may circumvent the major obstacles to more efficient cavity-enhanced high-field physics such as high-harmonic generation. The basic properties of Bessel-Gauss beams are reviewed and their transformation properties through simple optical systems (consisting of spherical and conical elements) are presented. A general Bessel-Gauss cavity design strategy is outlined, and a particular geometry, the confocal Bessel-Gauss cavity, is analyzed in detail. We numerically simulate the confocal Bessel-Gauss cavity and present an example cavity with 300 MHz repetition rate supporting an effective waist of 33 μm at the focus and an intensity ratio from the focus to the cavity mirror surfaces of 1.5 × 10(4).