Development of a Fabry-Perot cavity for the Compton polarimetry

A quick, precise and non-destructive longitudinal polarisation measurement should be a great advantage for the HAPPEX experiment at CEBAF (Jefferson Lab, USA). To achieve this, it could be possible to use a Fabry-Perot cavity to get a high photon flux at the electron-photon interaction point of a Compton polarimeter. This thesis is a first study for the design of such a system. We have shown that a 'monolithic' cavity, i.e. with mirrors mounted on fixed stage, is a good solution. My contribution for these studies is the development of a code to compute the optimum geometry of a cavity. Another of my contribution concerns the test of a cavity based on commercial mirrors with a gain > 160, using the Pound-Drever method to lock the laser frequency. My studies concern optical matching between the laser beam and the cavity, the choice of the frequency of modulation for the feed-back system and the characterization of the intracavity power. This work is a first step of the studies which will lead to the integration of a cavity based system on the CEBAF beam line. (author)