Hybrid master oscillator power amplifier high-power narrow-linewidth nanosecond laser source at 257 nm.

We report on a high-power narrow-linewidth pulsed laser source emitting at a wavelength of 257 nm. The system is based on a master oscillator power amplifier architecture, with Yb-doped fiber preamplifiers, a Yb:YAG single crystal fiber power amplifier used to overcome the Brillouin limitation in glass fiber and nonlinear frequency conversion stages. This particularly versatile architecture allows the generation of Fourier transform-limited 15 ns pulses at 1030 nm with 22 W of average power and a diffraction-limited beam (M(2)<1.1). At a repetition rate of 30 kHz, 106 μJ UV pulses are generated corresponding to an average power of 3.2 W.