Improvement of the spatial and temporal contrast of short-pulse KrF laser beams

Abstract

Abstract. Important figure of merit of high-intensity laser systems is the temporal and spatial quality of their pulses. Spatial filtering is a well known technique to improve the spatial quality by modulating the spatial components at the Fourier-plane, using a pinhole of appropriate size or recently by a nonlinear process. Modulation of the beam in the Fourier-plane allows however a simultaneous spatial and temporal filtering. By the use of a "conjugate" pinhole arrangement before and after the nonlinear spatial selector, intensity dependent transmission is obtained: the low intensity part is efficiently suppressed. Numerical calculations predict practical operation for both amplitude and phase modulation at the Fourier-plane. In the preferred latter case the experimental observations are in good agreement with the theory, demonstrating >40% throughput.