Abstract

There is much current interest in the generation of beams of extreme brightness from pulsed lasers. Table 1 summarizes the achievements in the three main lines of development. The amplification of chirped pulses in solid-state lasers and their subsequent compression has produced the highest powers to date but still has technical problems connected with pulse contrast ratio.¹ The second approach uses KrF lasers to directly generate pulses of approximately 100-fs duration² The highest brightness so far demonstrated has been with this approach.³ The present paper reports the development of a third approach to high brightness using a KrF-pumped methane Raman, laser system. This system has achieved a brightness of about 2×10¹⁹ W/cm⁻²sr⁻¹ .in pulses of 12-ps duration at 268 nm.

© 1992 Optical Society of America