In recent decades, two determining technical advances have made it possible to
build the laboratory-scale high-power laser system: the self-mode-locked Ti:Sapphire
femtosecond laser and chirped pulse amplification (CPA).
We have combined these two techniques to generate the high-energy laser, then
convert the wavelength to ultraviolet by third harmonic generation, and finally
amplify to the terawatt order output through the KrF* excimer amplifier. This
facility is capable of producing about 400 mJ, 230 fs, 248 nm with near diffraction
limited beam quality at a 0.4 Hz reparation rate.