Self-starting short-pulse XeCl laser with a stimulated Brillouin scattering mirror

A commercial XeCl laser system is operated with a phase-conjugating mirror based on stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS). No conventional start resonator is required. The near-field profile is converted from rectangular to near-Gaussian and the far-field spatial beam quality is increased by up to 60% relative to a conventional plane-plane resonator. The small reflectivity of a single SBS cell reduces the laser output power. A double-cell arrangement improves the reflectivity and the laser power, resulting in a simple excimer SBS resonator with improved brightness.