Author Correction: Understanding the effect of wet etching on damage resistance of surface scratches.

A correction to this article has been published and is linked from the HTML and PDF versions of this paper. The error has been fixed in the paper.

Understanding the effect of wet etching on damage resistance of surface scratches.

Fused silica optics often exhibit surface scratches after polishing that radically reduce their damage resistance at the wavelength of 351 nm in the nanosecond regime. Consequently, chemical treatments after polishing are often used to increase the damage threshold and ensure a safe operation of these optics in large fusion-scale laser facilities. Here, we investigate the reasons for such an improvement.

Effects of deep wet etching in HF/HNO and KOH solutions on the laser damage resistance and surface quality of fused silica optics at 351 nm.

We investigate the interest of deep wet etching with HF/HNO or KOH solutions as a final step after polishing to improve fused silica optics laser damage resistance at the wavelength of 351 nm. This comparison is carried out on scratches engineered on high damage threshold polished fused silica optics. We evidence that both KOH and HF/HNO solutions are efficient to passivate scratches and thus improve their damage threshold up to the level of the polished surface.