INJECTION LOCKING OF A MODIFIED-UNSTABLE-RESONATOR XECL LASER BY USING A LINE-NARROWED HEMICONFOCAL OSCILLATOR

Abstract

An injection-locked XeCl excimer laser with a modified positive-branch confocal unstable resonator was developed and the output characteristics were investigated. We utilized the hemieonfocal scheme in the line-narrowed oscillator in order to obtain a seed beam with high energy as well as narrow linewidth. In this case we obtained 0.05 cm(-1) linewidth with 10 mu J output energy. The maximum output energy of the injection-locked oscillator was 110 mJ, which is 15% greater than that with free-running oscillation. We also presented a new method which can simply measure the power gain of the amplifier, by which the small signal gain coefficient of the amplifier was measured to be 10%/cm.