Optical sources based on a multichannel surface discharge and their application to pump photolytically driven femtosecond XeF(C-A) amplifier

摘要

We report a novel experience gathered in the development of powerful optical sources of the vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) radiation, which are based on high-current multichannel surface discharges of submicrosecond duration. The peak intensity of the VUV radiation produced by the designed large-area (～0.1 m~2) optical sources reaches 130 kW/cm~2, whereas the intrinsic efficiency of the discharge emission within the spectral range of 120-200 nm attains 3.2 %. Application of such sources to pump a gaseous active medium of the multipass XeF(C-A) amplifier allows us obtaining the total gain factors exceeding 10~2 for the blue-green ultrashort optical pulses of 150 fs duration. The results presented in the report show a considerable potential of the developed laser technology for the femtosecond pulse amplification up to petawatt peak powers.