We had developed a unique porous thin films by a special coating method1. In this technique, two dielectric materials A and B having different refractive indices nA and nB ,where nA>nB are simultaneously deposited in vacuum on a substrate such as fused silica or optical glasses. Then the coated surface is processed in ultra-pure water which preferentially dissolves the material B. These processes result in a porous thin film
which has gradient refractive index and has the antireflection (AR) property over broad
bandwidth. The porous coating obtained by this method cannot apply depositing a multilayered dielectric thin film. We have developed a novel method. The present technique, a dielectric material D and a plastic P are simultaneously deposited in vacuum on a heated-substrate such as fused silica, ceramic or optical glasses. Then
the coated surface forms an adaptively mixed thin film ( AMTF ) with dielectric material and plastic. In this coating process, plastics partially evaporate due to the heated-substrate. The refractive index of the coated AMTF mainly decided by the mixing ratio of the dielectric material and plastic. In our samples the damage threshold was confirmed to be 115 J/cm2 at 10 ns and λ=1064 nm. The band width of AMTF with MgF2 and Teflon (AMTF: MgF2 ) was confirmed to cover from 200 to 8000 nm. This AMTF: MgF2 can be applicable not only to AR thin film, but to a high reflectance mirror and polarizer in various high intensity laser syetems.
1K.Yoshida, H.Yoshida, Y.Kato, and C.Yamanaka, Appl.Phy.Lett.47,911(1985)
Contamination of optics observed in LFEX compression chamber was a critical problem for maintaining high damage
threshold and high optical performance for mirrors and gratings in the vacuum environments. We conducted a study for
understanding this problem, and we found important knowledge on the nature of contamination, namely materials of
contaminants, source of contamination, the invasion mechanism, and removal method of contamination. We also found
the samples for the damage test is easily contaminated in the storage environment. This means the optical coating
accumulate contaminations even in the air. So we tested in-situ damage test in a gas flowing chamber with controlled
contaminants. The degradation was time-dependent phenomena, and proportional to the vapor
pressure of
contaminants. Several materials were tested, and even in water vapor, the damage threshold was decreased about 10%.
We also found out two methods for removing contaminations from the coatings. According to these studies, our
conclusion is special treatments should be used for knowing the intrinsic damage threshold of the coatings.
We have fabricated a 410 x 468 mm size deformable mirror with 100 Bimorph piezoceramic actuators for the LFEX
laser system at Osaka University. In the case of Bimorph-type deformable mirrors, the mirror surface had to be polished
and coated after bonding the piezoceramic actuators to the rear side of the thin mirror substrate. This provides a good
surface figure, but the coating temperature for the high-reflection mirror was strictly limited because of the thermal
fragility of piezoceramic actuators. The mirror substrate with the actuators was polished, and an ion-assisted multilayer
dielectric coating was produced at 60 degrees Celsius with our 80-inch coating chamber. The flatness of the mirror just
after coating was 7 μm, and reduced by aging to 3.2 μm when the mirror was assembled. The surface figure of the
assembled mirror with 20 piezostack bonded actuators is demonstrated and a laser-induced damage threshold tested with
a witness sample is also reported.
Hg0.35Cd0.65Ga2S4 and Hg0.52Cd0.48Ga2S4 have been found to be phase-matchable for type-1 second-harmonic generation (SHG) of the fundamental radiation at 2.907-5.453 μm and 2.423-6.725 μm, respectively. The Sellmeier equations for HgGa2S4 and CdGa2S4 that reproduce well these experimental results as well as the published data for the Cr:forsterite laser (1.25 μm)-pumped Hg0.35Cd0.65Ga2S4 optical parametric generator (OPG) and the Ti:Al2O3 laser (0.820 μm)-pumped Hg0.52Cd0.48Ga2S4 optical parametric amplifier (OPA) at 5.59-9.12 μm are presented.
This paper reports the 90° phase-matched fourth-harmonic generation of the CO2 laser wavelength at 10.5910 μm in BaGa4S7. The 1.4 cm long BaGa4S7 crystal used in the present experiment was cut at θ=9.2° in the xz(=bc) plane. The pump source was the second harmonic of the wave-guide CO2 laser (10.5910 μm) operating with an average output power of 18.3 W at 130 kHz. By focusing the 7.6 W, 5.2955 μm pulses (peak power is 6kW with 10 ns pulse duration) generated from the 2 cm long AgGa0.65In0.35Se2 crystal into the BaGa4S7 crystal (θPM=9.9°) with the 6 cm focal length ZnSe lens, the maximum average output power of 0.3 W was obtained at 2.6478 μm without any damage to the crystal. In addition, the new Sellmeier equations of BaGa4S7 are presented.
This paper reports the modified Sellmeier equations for ZnGeP2 (ZGP) that provide excellent reproduction of the
phase-matching conditions for DFG between the two CO2 laser wavelengths, and the Nd:YAG laser and the Nd:YAG
laser-pumped OPO in the THz region. Model calculations based on these Sellmeier equations strongly indicate that there
is no significant difference in the refractive indices of the non-annealed and annealed crystals from 1.0642μm to 1640μm
(0.18THz).
This paper reports the high-accuracy Sellmeier and thermo-optic dispersion formulas for β-BaB2O4 (β-BBO) that
provide the excellent reproduction of our data for second-harmonic generation (SHG) and sum-frequency generation
(SFG) down to 0.2048 and 0.1925μm as well as the optical parametric oscillator (OPO) tuning points up to 3.2μm, and
the temperature-dependent phase-matching angles for SHG and SFG that we have measured in the 0.193-0.6420μm
range as well as the recent data for SFG at 0.1934μm.
A frequency-doubled Nd:YAG laser was used to pump the RbTiOAsO4(RTA)/AgGaSe2 (AGSE) cascade optical
parametric oscillator (OPO) to generate the 5.764 μm IR pulses, which correspond to the main absorption band of
cholesterol. A maximum average output power of 40 mW was regularly obtained at 30 Hz and a pump power of 2.5 W
with a long-term pulse-to-pulse fluctuation of ±10%.
Large aperture laser pulse compressor designs use several diffraction gratings in series and sometimes tiled together to
compress an amplified 1 to 10 ns pulse to 0.1 to 10 ps. The wavefront of the compressed pulse must be well controlled to
allow focusing to a small spot on a target. Traditionally, multilayer dielectric gratings (MLDG) have been fabricated
onto high thermal expansion substrates such as BK7 glass to prevent crazing and excessive bending due to tensile
coating stress when operated in high vacuum. However, the high CTE of the BK7 can cause wavefront distortion and
changes in the period of the grating.
This work uses ion-assisted deposition of HfO2/SiO2 films to increase the compressive stress in MLD layers to allow use
of silica substrates in the compressor vacuum environment. Stress, coating uniformity, and damage results are reported.
The process was scaled to full size (91cm × 42cm) MLD gratings for use in the Osaka University LFEX laser system.
Diffracted wavefront results from the full scale gratings is presented.
We have investigated a relationship among the bulk laser-induced damage threshold (LIDT) and YAG ceramics
with various structural defects. The correlation of scattering defect density and laser damage resistance was clearly
observed. A high-quality YAG ceramic having a low-scattering density showed a higher LIDT than that of a low-quality
YAG ceramic. Laser damage threshold (LIDT) of high-quality YAG ceramic was almost the same as that of a single
crystal. In addition, the high-quality Nd:YAG ceramics with
low-defect density showed an excellent oscillation
efficiency which was comparable to that of a single crystal. Thus, high-quality YAG ceramic with low-defect density is
more reliable as a material which is highly resistant to laser damage.
The 90° phase-matched direct type-1 and type-2 third-harmonic generation (THG) at 0.3263 and 0.3837 μm were
observed along x of the monoclinic BiB3O6 at room temperature by using the idler of the β-BaB2O4 parametric oscillator.
These interactions preclude the non-phase-matched, cascaded quadratic processes owing to the crystal symmetry along x.
The phase-matching properties for these pure cubic processes are presented together with the results on the direct THG
of the Nd:YAG laser at 1.0642 μm in three principal planes.
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