Performance of optical fibers for transmission of high-peak-power XeCl excimer laser pulses

The simple and efficient fiber delivery of 5-ns pulses from a XeCl excimer laser operating at a wavelength of 308 nm is demonstrated. The coupling scheme uses all of the output energy of the XeCl excimer laser and benefits from a simple and easy-to-adjust fiber coupling. Experiments on the 308-nm fiber delivery for more than 2.5 million laser pulses of 8-ns pulse width (FWHM) and up to 8-mJ stabilized pulse energy are performed. The long-time pulsed UV laser transmission is found to be different for individual samples of optical fibers that perform very similarly in low-intensity UV light applications. For applications with strict demands on the long-time stability, a critical evaluation of the fiber performance with the 308-nm laser under operating conditions is necessary. Measurements between 1 and 200 Hz show a negligible dependence of the fiber delivery performance on the repetition rate of the transmitted laser pulses. PACS 42.55.Lt; 42.81.Cn; 07.69.Vg