Resonant Ring with a Gain of 32 for Use with a 1 MW 110 GHz Gyrotron

A 110 GHz quasi-optical ring resonator, designed for use with a 1 MW pulsed gyrotron, has been built and successfully tested using a 100 mW solid-state source. A high transparency (97%) input coupler is placed in the beam path, enabling a compression ratio of 32. The 6.7 ns output pulses are generated from the 2 m length ring using a Silicon laser driven semiconductor switch to produce the output pulse. The quasioptical ring resonator is designed with large waist sizes so that input pulses of up to 1 MW will stay under the 35 kV/cm electric field limit for ionization in ambient air. In the next step, 1 MW, microsecond pulses will be compressed to 32 MW, 6.7 ns pulses with this ring resonator, permitting the operation of novel, 110 GHz linear particle accelerators.