Design and performance of a short-pulse ultraviolet laser probe by cascade Raman scattering

Abstract

This paper describes a short-pulse ultraviolet laser probe with multistage wavelength converters and nonlinear optical compression. Through fourth harmonic generation and double stage backward Raman scattering, pulses as short as 15 ps at 308 nm with more than 1 mJ energy and uniform beam pattern are successfully obtained. The whole probe system shows precise timing and good stability.