A high optical power‐density excimer laser pumped by an electron‐beam‐sustained discharge has been developed. The electron‐beam generator comprised a 200‐kV pulse transformer‐driven power supply and an electrostatically focused electron‐beam diode. The careful design and optimization of this generator has allowed very reliable, reproducible operation of the complete laser system with a high enhancement ratio of 4.8. An average output power density of 0.63 MW cm−2in a 250‐ns (FWHM) pulse has been obtained from ane‐beam‐sustained discharge XeCl* laser with an extraction efficiency of 1.5%.