Abstract
Photoswitching of a homogeneous 1-l discharge has been tested on a specially designed excimer laser by using either an x-ray beam or a KrF laser beam as a photoionization source. With x rays, a 1.4-J, 4×4-cm2, XeCl laser beam has been obtained with 1.7% efficiency and an impedance-matched 50-ns pulse-forming line directly connected to the electrodes. Since the output energy seems to rise monotonically as a function of electron–ion pair initial density, even better performances should be attainable with a more intense photoionization source.