50 J discharge-pumped XeCl laser

An X-ray preionized XeCl laser with a wide aperture of 10*10 cm/sup 2/ is described. The density for preionization electrons is estimated from an X-ray energy distribution to be greater than 6*10/sup 9/ cm/sup -3/ under operational gas conditions. In high pressure operation at 4500 torr, sufficient preionization has led to successful discharge-breakdown at a low E/N of 6.4*10/sup -17/ V-cm/sup 2/, resulting in a high electrical efficiency of 3.1% with an output energy of 17.6 J. An output energy of 50 J in an 85-ns (FWHM) optical pulse has been extracted from an active volume of about 10:1 for a pulse-forming-line (PFL) voltage of 400 kV. The effects of impedance transformation of a pulse-transmission-line (PTL) following the PFL have been investigated using two types of PTL with output impedances of 0.26 and 0.48 Omega .<
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