RESUMO
It is demonstrated for the first time that plasma mirrors can be successfully applied for KrF laser systems. High reflectivity up to 70% is achieved by optimization of the beam quality on the plasma mirror. The modest spectral shift and the good reflected beam quality allow its applicability for high power laser systems for which a new arrangement is suggested.
RESUMO
Recently, we have reported on a compact microcontroller-based unit developed to accurately synchronize excimer laser pulses (Mingesz et al. 2012 Fluct. Noise Lett. 11, 1240007 (doi:10.1142/S021947751240007X)). We have shown that dithering based on random jitter noise plus pseudorandom numbers can be used in the digital control system to radically reduce the long-term drift of the laser pulse from the trigger and to improve the accuracy of the synchronization. In this update paper, we present our new experimental results obtained by the use of the delay-controller unit to tune the timing of a KrF excimer laser as an addition to our previous numerical simulation results. The hardware was interfaced to the laser using optical signal paths in order to reduce sensitivity to electromagnetic interference and the control algorithm tested by simulations was applied in the experiments. We have found that the system is able to reduce the delay uncertainty very close to the theoretical limit and performs well in real applications. The simple, compact and flexible system is universal enough to also be used in various multidisciplinary applications.
