CONCEPT AND NUMERICAL INVESTIGATION OF AN ULTRAFAST HIGH-CONTRAST HIGH-POWER KRF LASER SYSTEM

The concept of an 'all-excimer' ultrafast high-power UV laser system i mplementing the KrF excimer medium both in the oscillator and in the a mplifiers is presented. The system includes a short-pulse (10(-11)-10( -10) s) KrF oscillator employing fast pulse period Q-switching or trun cated Brillouin scattering and a multipass KrF amplifier with a multil ayer saturable absorber applied as a highly effective pulse compressor . By means of computer simulations, it is shown that the system, incor porating currently available KrF discharge modules and acridine dye as the saturable absorber, is capable of generating high-contrast pico- or subpicosecond pulses of near terawatt power level.