Abstract

Recently, considerable progress was achieved in the field of microwave excitation of high pressure gas discharges such as rare-gas halide gas mixtures. The pulse energies obtained earlier for XeCl excimer lasers^[1,2] with commercially available microwave excitation sources could be exceeded by at least two orders of magnitude^[3]. Important for this breakthrough was the combination of the microwave pulse compression technique^[4] and the high pressure discharge operating both as a switch and an amplifier for the XeCl laser radiation.

© 1992 IQEC