Analysis of laser damage tests on a coating for broad bandwidth high reflection of femtosecond pulses

Abstract

We have designed and produced an optical coating suitable for broad bandwidth high reflection (BBHR) at 45° angle of incidence (AOI), P polarization (Ppol) of petawatt (PW) class fs laser pulses of ~ 900 nm center wavelength. We have produced such BBHR coatings consisting of TiO2/SiO2 layer pairs deposited by ion assisted e-beam evaporation using the large optics coater at Sandia National Laboratories. This paper focuses on laser-induced damage threshold (LIDT) tests of these coatings. LIDT is difficult to measure for such coatings due to the broad range of wavelengths over which they can operate. An ideal test would be in the vacuum environment of the fs-pulse PW use laser using fs pulses identical to of the PW laser. Short of this ideal testing would be tests over portions of the HR band of the BBHR coating using ns or sub-ps pulses produced by tunable lasers. Such tests could be over ~ 10 nm wide wavelength intervals whose center wavelengths could be tuned over the BBHR coating’s operational band. Alternatively, the HR band of the BBHR coating could be adjusted by means of wavelength shifts due to changing the AOI of the LIDT tests or due to absorbed moisture by the coating under ambient conditions. We conduct LIDT tests on the BBHR coatings at selected AOIs to gain insight into the coatings’ laser damage properties, and analyze how the results of the different LIDT tests compare.