Output characteristics of a discharge-pumped F₂ laser (157 nm) with an injection-seeded unstable resonator

To improve beam quality, an injection-seeded unstable resonator was applied to a discharge-pumped F₂ laser, which is normally dominated by amplified spontaneous emission with a large beam divergence when using a normal stable cavity, due to the laser's extremely high gain (a small-signal gain-length product ∼29). The time-dependent injection-seeding efficiency was obtained for various injection timings by measuring a ratio of the output laser intensity with the same polarization as the seed laser. Correlation of the injection-seeding efficiency with the temporal evolution of the laser-beam divergence was also studied. Both the time-dependent beam divergence and the injection-seeding efficiency showed degradation at a later part of the laser pulse.