Abstract

Laser produced plasma was used to excite alkali halide vapors to create a new class of excimer molecules, the alkali halide ionic excimers,¹ which are promising laser sources in the VUV wavelength region. The soft x-rays emitted from a laser produced plasma on a metallic target were used to photoionize CsF vapor² and produce excited state Cs²⁺F^- molecules in a heat pipe cell (Fig. 1). The plasma pumping source was a Nd:YAG-based mode-locked oscillator/regenerative amplifier system providing 225 mJ, 100-psec pulses at 6 Hz in the basic experimental configuration.³ 200-psec and 2-nsec duration laser pulses were also used to determine the effect of the pulse duration on the gain dynamics. The Nd laser beam was line-focused onto a rotating cylindrical target with grooved surface by a cylindrical mirror⁴ under 60 deg angle of incidence realizing a quasi-traveling wave excitation.

© 1994 IEEE