Optical Surfaces has delivered an F0.8 on-axis parabola of 175mm diameter to the Central Laser Facility at the STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory.
The CLF's applications include experiments in physics, chemistry and biology, accelerating subatomic particles to high energies, probing chemical reactions on the shortest timescales and studying biochemical and biophysical process critical to life itself.
Due to be installed on the Astra Gemini laser beam line, the diffraction-limited on-axis mirror will be used to focus the beam-line energy to produce a maximum focused intensity of 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000Wcm-2, enabling researchers to explore new areas of physics.
Optical Surfaces' production team produced the fast-focusing on-axis parabolic mirror with a surface accuracy of better than lambda/10 P-V and smoothness of 20/10 scratch/dig.
The surface quality achieved during manufacturing together with the high-reflectivity coatings will enable RAL researchers to achieve the high optical performance and efficiency required by their experiments.
The optics were manufactured in Zerodur and coated using a UV-Silver coating suitable for high reflectivity throughout the wavelength range 350-800nm.
