Full-scale optic designed for onsite study of damage growth at the Laser MegaJoule facility.

Large fusion scale laser facilities aim at delivering megajoules laser energy in the UV spectrum and nanosecond regime. Due to the extreme laser energies, the laser damage of final optics of such beamlines is an important issue that must be addressed. Once a damage site initiates, it grows at each laser shot which decreases the quality of the optical component and spoil laser performances.

Large optics metrology for high-power lasers.

The Laser MégaJoule (LMJ) is a high-power laser dedicated to laser-plasma experiments. At the beginning of the project in the mid-1990s, an optical metrology laboratory was created at CEA to help accomplish all the steps in the construction of this laser. This paper proposes an overview of the capabilities of this metrology laboratory in four main fields: surface imperfections, photometry, laser damage measurement, and wavefront measurement.

Effect of electric field on laser induced damage threshold of multilayer dielectric gratings.

This paper studies gratings engraved in multilayer dielectric stacks for ultra high intensity laser compressors application. We design various grating profiles with high reflected efficiencies for 1780 l/mm multilayer dielectric gratings (MLD). Each grating is defined to exhibit a different electric field maximum value in the pillars of the grating.

High-average-power diode-array-pumped frequency-doubled YAG laser.

We report on the laser performance and power scaling properties of a diode-laser side-pumped Nd:YAG laser operating at high average power. The Nd:YAG laser is pumped by 35 20-W cw bars and produces 106 W of average power at 532 nm when it is intracavity doubled with KTiOPO(4) and Q switched at 27 kHz, leading to a 5.4% optical-to-electrical efficiency.