Numerical simulation of the active medium and investigation of the pump source for the development of a photochemical XeF(C–A) amplifier of femtosecond optical pulses

Numerical simulations of the active medium of an XeF(C–A) amplifier were used to determine the conditions for its spatially uniform excitation. It is shown that in the transient regime of the bleaching wave formation, the excitation efficiency increases with increasing steepness of the pump pulse leading edge. An optical source for pumping an XeF(C–A) amplifier was developed and investigated. The source is based on a radically new approach to the production of a large-area surface discharge (of the order of 100 cm² and over) without using switches in the feed circuit connected in series with the discharge. Radiation pulses of the shortest duration (0.6–0.7 μs) for this kind of sources were obtained. There are grounds to believe that applying this source in a 50-cm long multipass amplifier will provide an overall gain of ~10³.