Laser-induced damage: 60 years of measurements

Abstract

This review is devoted to an analysis of measurements of the absolute magnitudes of the laser-induced damage thresholds of transparent dielectrics. The factors considered here are neglected not only in experiments, but also in existing ISO 21254 standards for measuring the absolute magnitudes of damage thresholds. It is shown that the use of multifrequency lasers causes large errors in the measured powers (by a factor of 5–10) as a consequence of the generation of unrecorded ultrashort pulses of various widths and peak powers. The aberrations that arise when radiation is focused into the volume of the samples is another source of substantial errors of the absolute power density. This paper discusses how low-threshold defects, multiphoton absorption, and self-focusing affect the study of intrinsic laser-induced damage. It is shown that almost all published results were measured with the participation of self-focusing. It must be concluded that the overwhelming majority of papers involve large errors and need to be completely revised.