Abstract
A wide-aperture x-ray preionized KrF laser has been studied in detail. The minimum x-ray dose rate needed for perfect saturation of output energy was as low as 1-2mR/100ns. In Ne-buf-fer operation, an output energy of 12.0J in a 40ns (FWHM) optical pulse was extracted with a beam cross-section of 8cm × 10cm. The XeCl laser operation under the same discharge condi-tions produced twice the output energy in twice the optical pulse width. No experimental evi-dence showing remarkable discharge instability in the KrF laser operation has not been found. The low KrF laser output energy was attributed to the high threshold for laser oscillation from the experiment and the discharge simulation. The use of a Ne-He mixture as a buffer gas and a pulse transmission line with high ouput-impedance led to the efficient operation for KrF laser. The maximum output energy and the highest electrical efficiency obtained in the present study were 16.3J and 1.7%, respectively.
