A XeCl laser with a controlled radiation pulse shape

The pump parameters of a three-contour excitation system are studied in a gas-discharge excimer XeCl laser using a Ne—Xe—HCl mixture. A computation model is developed for finding the parameters of multi-contour excitation systems. A setup incorporating a three-contour system for excitation and automatic UV preionisation is designed, which provides multipulse generation of 65-ns, 26-mJ laser pulses at the laser efficiency of 1%. It is shown that generation of short radiation pulses of duration 7 ns and relatively long pulses of duration 65 ns in the multipulse generation regime is possible in the excitation system under study in Xe:HCl = 20:1 mixtures containing neon as buffer gas.