Pulse generator for pumping electric-discharge excimer lasers

Abstract

A pulse generator is developed for pumping electric-discharge excimer lasers in which the capacitive energy storage is connected with the gas-discharge chamber of the laser with the help of a multichannel spark switch via a low-inductive strip line. This scheme of the generator reduces energy losses in the switch and the inductance of the discharge circuit of the capacitive storage. For the pump power equal to 800 MW, the efficiency of the stored energy transfer to a load achieves 85%. To ignite a homogeneous volume discharge, the generator produces a prepulse, which initiates a low-current volume discharge in the gas-discharge chamber. Upon excitation of an electric-discharge XeCl laser with the 3 × 5.4 × 80-cm active region and the Ne : Xe : HCl= 2000 : 2.5 : 1 mixture at a pressure of 4 atm, radiation pulses with energies up to 3.4 J and the FWHM duration up to 260 ns were obtained with a homogeneous energy distribution over the laser aperture.