High-energy, strong-field deep-ultraviolet based joule-class amplifier with distributed-faced-cooling chips

We report on a high-energy, strong-field deep-UV (DUV) pulse system. The system is based on a diode-pumped solid-state laser and employs a distributed face-cooling (DFC) chip-based, sub-nanosecond, joule-class amplifier using Nd:YAG and sapphire, operating at a 20 Hz repetition rate. Using DFC chips enables the realization of joule-class pulse energy at room temperature with minimal thermal lensing and thermal birefringence effects, while allowing the flexible adjustment of the pulse energy and repetition rate. As a result, at a wavelength of 266 nm, the system has achieved a pulse energy of 235 mJ, a repetition rate of 2 Hz, and a sub-nanosecond pulse width of 480 ps. This corresponds to a very high peak power of 0.49 GW, which is comparable to that of excimer lasers and is considered suitable for pulsed laser deposition.