Plasma has been widely used in the in situ removal of organic contaminants on the surface of large aperture optical components by physical bombardment and chemical reaction. Since the plasma is usually generated by ionizing gas through the electric field, the charged reactive species are accelerated to bombard the surface when passing through the surface sheath. After the organic contaminants on the surface of the optical components are completely removed, the surface film of the optical components may be eroded by long-time plasma irradiation. Therefore, the surface damage characteristics induced by plasma cleaning on optical components were studied to apply the technology of plasma in situ cleaning in the inertial confinement fusion facilities. Firstly, the effect of the amount of organic contaminants on the performance of optical components was investigated. Then, the influence of plasma cleaning time on the transmittance and wavelength peak of fused quartz optical components coated with sol-gel anti-reflection film was analyzed. The plasma cleaning experiments illustrated that the film thickness had a damage accumulation effect after the long plasma irradiation, and the surface pores gradually increased. The surface damage mechanism of plasma action was discussed. Finally, the research on the surface damage mechanism of sol-gel anti-reflective film during plasma cleaning lays a foundation for the realization of nondestructive in situ cleaning of optical components.
The surface of the gold film grating appeared to different degrees of carbon burning phenomenon under high energy laser irradiation, which resulted in the degradation of the grating performance. Thus, in this study, the main components and relative contents of organic contaminants in the wall and air at different positions in the chirped pulse amplification system were detected by gas chromatography and mass spectrometry. The organic molecules were volatilized from potential sources such as components and pump oil or dust produced by stray light irradiation of carbon-based materials. The contaminant C12H38O5Si6 was found at multiple sampling sites, indicating that the hydrocarbon molecules in the contaminant formed a chemical bond with the molecular structure of silicon and oxygen on the surface of the optical component. Compared to physical adsorption, this chemical bond adsorption is stronger and more difficult to remove. The effect of long-term vacuum organic contamination on the diffraction efficiency of the gold grating was not significant enough. On the contrary, organic residual contaminants were formed in the laser-irradiated area of the surface of the gold grating, and the diffraction efficiency was significantly reduced to two-thirds of the undamaged area. Many small organic molecules, particles and water molecules were deposited in the grooves on the surface of the gold grating, and carbonization occurs under the action of ultra-short pulse laser. A stress pit appeared in the center area of laser irradiation, causing damage to the surface of the grating.
Backward light by stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) induces the final transport mirror laser damage, which has been considered a bottleneck problem in developing high-power and high-energy laser facilities. In this work, an improved continuous phase plate (CPP) model and a backward SBS model were established based on the G-S algorithm and the Fresnel diffraction transmission algorithm to simulate the backward SBS to the final transport mirror. This study discussed the propagation characteristics of backward SBS. The research results showed that the distribution of the backward SBS transmitted to the final transport mirror was determined by the phase structure of the continuous phase plate attached to the back-transmission process. By optimizing the CPP design, reducing the transmission distance, reducing the intensity modulation, and controlling the phase of the incident beam, the modulation of backward SBS can be suppressed, which has great significance in improving the laser-induced damage threshold to the final transport mirror.
Fused silica optical elements are widely used in large high-power laser devices, and the subsurface defects of optical elements directly affect the laser damage threshold and imaging quality. These defects are distributed within a few to tens of microns from the surface and cannot be detected by conventional imaging methods. The characteristics of small size, low density and wide distribution range make it difficult to detect nondestructively, effectively and quickly with conventional methods. In order to solve the above problems, an experimental system was built based on the principles of photoluminescence and dark field scattering. Use the different characteristics of fluorescence image and scattering image to carry out the research of subsurface defect detection. First, preprocess the original image. Second, calculate the offset of adjacent images, perform background homogenization processing on the image, and stitch the sub-aperture images, and then segment the full-aperture image. Then, a more effective subsurface defect extraction algorithm is proposed. Finally, etch the sample with HF and observe it under a microscope. Experimental results show that this method can detect weak defects on the surface and sub-surface at the same time, and can effectively separate individual sub-surface defects. This method has the advantages of lossless, fast and high precision. Moreover, based on a large amount of data, analysis and summary of the causes of defects, distribution characteristics, etc.. This method can provide certain guidance for the evaluation of laser damage threshold and processing technology of optical components in high-power laser devices.
The surface quality of the optical element substrate will affect the laser damage threshold of the dielectric coatings. Substrate surface scratches are one of the common damages to the substrate. In this work, the parabola-section-model lateral scratches of the 45° HR coating with a central wavelength of 1064 nm substrate are studied, and the scratches and multilayer coatings are established. The three-dimensional finite element method is used to simulate the electric field modulation generated by scratches in the fundamental frequency high-reflective film when coatings irradiated at 1064nm and 355nm . The results show that under the same conditions, greater light intensification at the shorter wavelength.The electric field enhancement of p-polarized light is larger than that of s-polarized light. For 1064nm laser, when the incident angle is 45° The electric field intensity is the highest. When the incident laser at 355nm , the maximum intensity enhancement is produced when the incident is 60à.When the laser is incident at 45°, the greater the depth of the scratch, the stronger the electric field intensity in the film. The angle at which the 355nm laser is irradiated on the surface of the recessed film determines the magnitude of the electric field enhancement. Therefore, the electric field strength is very sensitive to the angle of incidence and the depth of the scratch.
In large high-power laser devices,the surface and subsurface defects of fused silica optical components directly affect the laser damage threshold and imaging quality. In this paper, fluorescence imaging technology is used to obtain images of defects in the subsurface layer of optical components that will absorb laser. Because the original image has the characteristics of sparse signal, weak intensity, low contrast, etc. In order to efficiently and reliably evaluate the surface and subsurface defects, this paper proposes a weak and small defect detection method based on local adaptive contrast enhancement and seed region growth. Firstly, the local adaptive contrast enhancement method is used to enhance the contrast of the original image. Secondly, the method of bilateral filtering is used to denoise. Thirdly, seed region growth method is used to segment the defective regions and perform morphological processing. Finally, defect detection is performed. The experiment uses different segmentation methods to detect images in different regions. The results show that this method can significantly enhance the contrast of the original fluorescence image, and detect pixel-level defects, and the detection rate is stable at about 95%. Meanwhile, the reasons, size distribution and other characteristics of the sub-surface defects of fused silica optical components are analyzed. This paper provides a nondestructive method of detecting weak and small defects in the subsurface layer of the optical element faster and higher accuracy.
Large-diameter optical components are important parts of the high-power laser facility [1, 2], and generally have a diameter greater than 400 mm × 400 mm. It is important for the detection of the surface and internal characteristics of large-diameter optical components [3, 4]. Since large-diameter optical components have a large imaging range and a certain thickness (generally over 50 mm), how to achieve high-resolution imaging over the entire thickness of large-diameter optical components becomes a challenge. This paper proposes to use medium format CMOS to realize large field microscopy imaging to ensure that the imaging range meets the field of view requirements of large aperture optical components. At the same time, a microscopic imaging lens with a magnification of 1.5 is designed to ensure that the object resolution is 4.5μm. Simulation experiments show that the system takes advantage of microscopic imaging, wavefront coding, and medium-format large targets. The imaging system can clearly image the entire large-diameter optical component over a long depth of field, improving the detection efficiency and detection accuracy of large-diameter optical components.
KEYWORDS: Stray light, Absorption, Glasses, High power lasers, Laser systems engineering, Laser damage threshold, Metals, Solid state lasers, Finite element methods, Interference (communication)
In high power solid-state laser facilities, stray lights may do great damage to optical glass and metal structure and affect the transmission of the main laser and the environment cleanliness inside the facility. On the other hand, the stray may also form noise signal of the main laser pulse and affect the output quality. There are mature solutions for the controlling and absorption of parallel and divergent stray light[2]. However there are no reliable solution for the absorption of the converging stray light near its focal spot. An absorber design are proposed using multiple materials and small angle light cone. And this design can realize effective absorption of the stray light focal spot with the peak fluence up to 40J/cm2.
On a high power solid laser facility, the wavefront coding (WFC) technology has been adopted to obtain 3m-13m over-long depth of field in an array optical components defect detection system[1]; The lack of the boundary information due to the sudden boundary truncation will cause the ringing effect in the image restoration process. By using the theory of the boundary condition s(BCs), an image enlarged by the different boundary hypothesis can be given; The frequency filtering has been used to find the restored result. The frequency property of the enlarged image and the effect to the boundary of the restored image are analyzed. Effectiveness and speediness of the proposed method are demonstrated by experiment results, which can give excellent deconvolution and noise suppression restored image and reduce the boundary ringing effect under the reflective boundary conditions in a wave-front coding (WFC) system. The experiment shows the proposed algorithm can give satisfactory restoration results on the long depth of field array optical components defect detection system[1] .
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