High-efficiency 2 kW XeCl excimer laser

Abstract

An average power of 2 kW with an efficiency of 4.3% was demonstrated in a discharge-pumped XeCl laser using a spiker/sustainer circuit and surface corona preionizer. Effective discharge volume is 4 cm gap length, 2.5 cm discharge width and 2 m effective discharge length. The behavior of the 500 W laser developed in previous work was investigated by computer simulation. It was found that most of the spiker energy is not deposited into the discharge volume in the reverse voltage operating mode, though this operating mode is indispensable for high repetitive operation of the spiker/sustainer circuit. Based on the simulation results, the laser apparatus was redesigned and consequently a laser output energy of 2.5 J with a high efficiency of 4.5% obtained. In repetitive operation at 800 Hz, the high performance mentioned above was attained.