Transform-limited-bandwidth injection locking of an XeF laser with an Ar-iron laser at 3511 &Aring

Experiments demonstrating the possibility of channeling the energy of a high-power unstable resonator XeF laser into a narrow bandwidth by injection locking with a low-power pulsed Ar III ion laser beam are reported. The argon ion laser output at 3511 A passed through a Fabry-Perot etalon yielding a single longitudinal laser mode with a bandwidth of less than 50 MHz, which was injected into the positive-branch confocal unstable-resonator cavity of an XeF discharge laser. A transform limited beam of greater than 2 MW power in a 50-MHz bandwidth 25-nsec pulse was generated which corresponds to about 60 percent of the total output energy of the XeF laser. The output from the injection-locked laser was also observed to induce backward stimulated Brillouin and Raman scattering from several liquids.