Ultrahigh-brightness, femtosecond ArF excimer laser system

An ultrahigh-brightness ArF excimer laser system is described that is capable of generating pulse energies of 60 mJ with a pulse duration of ~700 fs. The system utilizes a newly developed seed pulse generation scheme based on spectrally compensated sum-frequency mixing in beta-barium metaborate (BBO), and a double-pass discharge pumped ArF excimer preamplifier followed by an electron beam pumped power amplifier