Laser Megajoule performance status.

The Laser Megajoule (LMJ) is among the most energetic inertial confinement fusion laser facilities in the world, together with the National Ignition Facility (NIF) in the USA. The construction of the facility began back in 2003, and the first photons were emitted by the laser bundle #28 in 2014. Today, 11 laser bundles consisting of 88 large aperture 0.

Fused silica ablation by double femtosecond laser pulses: influence of polarization state.

Glass processing is a subject of high interest for many industrial fields such as optics manufacturing, smart electronics or medical devices. With respect to nanosecond technology, the use of femtosecond lasers allows to achieve high processing quality thanks to nonlinear absorption properties. Nevertheless, the throughput of femtosecond processing is still very low when compared to other laser technologies.

Laser-induced damage of fused silica optics at 355 nm due to backward stimulated Brillouin scattering: experimental and theoretical results.

Forward pump pulses with nanosecond duration are able to generate an acoustic wave via electrostriction through a few centimeters of bulk silica. Part of the incident energy is then scattered back on this sound wave, creating a backward Stokes pulse. This phenomenon known as stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) might induce first energy-loss, variable change of the temporal waveform depending on the location in the spatial profile making accurate metrology impossible, and moreover it might also initiate front surface damage making the optics unusable.