Sandia's Large Optics Coating Operation has extensive results of laser induced damage threshold (LIDT) testing of its anti-reflection (AR) and high reflection coatings on substrates pitch polished using ceria and washed in a process that includes an alumina wash step. The purpose of the alumina wash step is to remove residual polishing compound to minimize its role in laser damage. These LIDT tests are for multi longitudinal mode, ns class pulses at 1064 nm and 532 nm (NIF-MEL protocol) and mode locked, sub-ps class pulses at 1054 nm (Sandia measurements), and show reasonably high and adequate laser damage resistance for coatings in the beam trains of Sandia's Z-Backlighter terawatt and petawatt lasers. An AR coating in addition to coatings of our previous reports confirms this with LIDTs of 33.0 J/cm² for 3.5 ns pulses and 1.8 J/cm² for 350 fs pulses. In this paper, we investigate both ceria and zirconia in doublesided polishing (common for large flat Z-Backlighter laser optics) as they affect LIDTs of an AR coating on fused silica substrates washed with or without the alumina wash step. For these AR coated, double-sided polished surfaces, ceria polishing in general affords better resistance to laser damage than zirconia polishing and laser damage is less likely with the alumina wash step than without it. This is supported by specific results of laser damage tests with 3.5 ns, multi longitudinal mode, single shot pulses at 1064 nm and 532 nm, with 7.0 ns, single and multi longitudinal mode, single and multi shot pulses at 532 nm, and with 350 fs, mode-locked, single shot pulses at 1054 nm.

Date Published: 29 November 2010
PDF: 10 pages
Proc. SPIE 7842, Laser-Induced Damage in Optical Materials: 2010, 784208 (29 November 2010); doi: 10.1117/12.868350

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 7842:
Laser-Induced Damage in Optical Materials: 2010
Gregory J. Exarhos; Vitaly E. Gruzdev; Joseph A. Menapace; Detlev Ristau; M. J. Soileau, Editor(s)