| A number of properties of the laser crystal cerium doped lithium lutetium fluoride (Ce:LLF) were measured. The spontaneous lifetime was found to be 37.6 +/- 1.0 ns. The gain cross-section at 308 nm (pi polarization) was determined to be (3.1 +/- 1.2) x 10-18 cm 2. The absorption cross-sections at 248 nm for sigma and pi polarizations were found to be (7.3 +/- 3.2) x 10-18 cm 2 and (1.3 +/- 0.7) x 10-17 cm 2. A sigma polarized transverse pump flux of 1.3 J/cm2 at 248 nm gave a single pass gain coefficient of 4.7 cm-1 at 308 nm (pi polarization) in a 7.5 mm long crystal. A 3 stage amplifier system was simulated, indicating that a 60 fs 20 muJ seed pulse could be amplified to an output energy of 798 mJ, resulting in a peak power of 13.3 TW using 5.1 J of KrF pump energy. |
