Development of a 100 Joule level XeCl laser pumped by intense relativistic electron beam

A 100 J level XeCl laser pumped by an intense relativistic electron beam- FLASH II was constructed at Northwest Institute of Nuclear Technology. in China. FLASH II is a low impedance REB accelerator. It consists of a 64 stage Marx generator, pulse forming line, field-distortion main switch, pulse transmission line, output lineand diode. The cathode of diode for laser pumping is a 15 × 60 cm long multi-point copper plate or graphite plane plate. The anode and pressure foils are both 25 micron Ti. The voltage of diode is measured to be 650-750 kv and the current 290-350 kA. The pump power density ranges between 1.5-2.0 MW/cm
³
. The aperture of laser cell is 20 × 20 cm and the effective excitation volume is 24 liters. We have obtained the laser output energy of I36 J with a parallel-plane resonator and 1.5 mrad divergence angle from an unstable resonator. The laser power is measured to be more than 10
⁹
W.