Birefringence and residual stress induced by CO2 laser mitigation of damage growth in fused silica

Abstract

We investigate the residual stress field created near mitigated sites and its influence on the efficiency on the CO2 laser mitigation of damage growth process. A numerical model of CO2 laser interaction with fused silica is developed that take into account laser energy absorption, heat transfer, thermally-induced stress and birefringence. Specific photoelastic methods are developed to characterize the residual stress near mitigated sites in fused silica samples. The stress distribution and quantitative values of stress levels are obtained for sites treated with the CO2 laser in various conditions of energy deposition (beam size, pulse duration, incident power). The results obtained also show that the presence of birefringence/residual stress around the mitigated sites has a critical effect on their laser damage resistance.