Abstract
Recent encouraging developments in the field of excimer laser angioplasty have stimulated investigation of the high-peak and high-average-power UV transmission properties of very small diameter quartz fibers. Quartz fiber-optic cables are also of interest since they may provide a practical means of delivering UV laser radiation to a number of work stations, for example, in the microelectronics industry. Two key issues in all UV fiber delivery systems are the surface damage threshold and the overall transmission of the fiber. However, to date there have been only preliminary investigations in this area. For example, it is not known whether the use of a long optical pulse duration rare gas halide laser will permit greater energy transmission down an optical fiber. Recent advances in rare gas halide laser technology made by the authors have led to development of a self-sustained discharge XeCI laser with very long (up to 1.5-μs) duration optical pulses.1 A picture of a small 10-mJ, 200-ns (FWHM), 0.5 × 0.5-cm2 cross-section XeCI laser is shown in Fig. 1. This picture reveals that long optical pulse, modest output energy lasers are rattier straightforward to construct and can operate at very low voltages. For the damage study a much larger1 [0.5-J, 300-ns (FWHM)] laser was used as well as a Lumonics 860 laser which produced a 10-ns (FWHM) duration laser pulse.
© 1986 Optical Society of America
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