Permanent laser conditioning of thin film optical materials
AssigneeThe United States of America as represented by the United States Department of Energy
InventorsC. Robert Wolfe, Mark R. Kozlowski, John H. Campbell, Michael Staggs, Frank Rainer
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Abstract
The invention comprises a method for producing optical thin films with a high laser damage threshold and the resulting thin films. The laser damage threshold of the thin films is permanently increased by irradiating the thin films with a fluence below an unconditioned laser damage threshold.
Claims7
A method of conditioning an optical coating to increase a permanent damage threshold thereof to laser radiation of a desired wavelength which comprises irradiating said coating with a laser beam in a ramp-like fashion, wherein successive irradiation steps are applied in increasingly higher fluences, each increase being substantially less than a percent of an initial damage threshold of said coating, a first irradiation step having a fluence of less than 85% of the initial damage threshold and a final irradiation step having a fluence greater, than 100% of the initial damage threshold.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.