This paper describes the physical processes that occur when high-power continuous-wave laser light interacts with absorbing particles on a low-absorption optical surface. When a particulate-contaminated surface is illuminated by high-power continuous-wave laser light, a short burst of light is emitted from the surface, and the particles rapidly heat over a period of milliseconds to thousands of degrees Celsius, migrating over and evaporating from the surface. The surviving particles tend to coalesce into larger ones and leave a relatively flat residue on the surface. The total volume of the material on the surface has decreased dramatically. The optical surface itself heats substantially during illumination, but the surface temperature can decrease as the material is evaporated. Optical surfaces that survive this process without catastrophic damage are found to be more resistant to laser damage than surfaces that have not undergone the process. The surface temperature of the conditioned surfaces under illumination is lower than that of unconditioned surfaces. These conditioning effects on particles occurred within the first 30 s of laser exposure, with subsequent laser shots not affecting particle distributions. High-speed photography showed the actual removal and agglomeration of individual particles to occur within about 0.7 ms. Elemental changes were measured using time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectroscopy, with conditioned residuals being higher in hydrocarbon content than pristine particles. The tests in this study were conducted on high-reflectivity distributed Bragg reflector coated optics with carbon microparticles in the size range of 20-50 μm, gold particles of size 250 nm, and silica 1 μm in size.

The laser-damage thresholds of single material and nanolaminate thin films were compared under continuous-wave (CW) illumination conditions. Nanolaminate films consist of uniform material interrupted by the periodic insertion of one or more atomic layers of an alternative material. Hafnia and titania were used as the base materials, and the films were deposited using atomic-layer deposition. The nanolaminates were less polycrystalline than the uniform films, as quantified using x-ray diffraction. It was found that the nanolaminate films had reduced laser-damage thresholds on smooth and patterned substrates as compared to uniform single-material films. This behavior is unusual as prior art indicates that amorphous (less polycrystalline) materials have higher laser-damage thresholds under short-pulse excitation. It is speculated that this may indicate that local thermal conduction affects breakdown more strongly under CW excitation than the dielectric properties that are important for short-pulse excitation.

Thermal effects in optical substrates are vitally important in determining laser damage resistance in long-pulse and continuous-wave laser systems. Thermal deformation waves in a soda-lime-silica glass substrate have been measured using high-speed interferometry during a series of laser pulses incident on the surface. Two-dimensional images of the thermal waves were captured at a rate of up to six frames per thermal event using a quantitative phase measurement method. The system comprised a Mach-Zehnder interferometer, along with a high-speed camera capable of up to 20,000 frames-per-second. The sample was placed in the interferometer and irradiated with 100 ns, 2 kHz Q-switched pulses from a high-power Nd:YAG laser operating at 1064 nm. Phase measurements were converted to temperature using known values of thermal expansion and temperature-dependent refractive index for glass. The thermal decay at the center of the thermal wave was fit to a function derived from first principles with excellent agreement. Additionally, the spread of the thermal distribution over time was fit to the same function. Both the temporal decay fit and the spatial fit produced a thermal diffusivity of 5×10^-7 m²/s.

High temperature microheaters have been designed and constructed to reduce the background thermal emission radiation produced by the heater. Such heaters allow one to probe luminescence with very low numbers of photons where the background emission would overwhelm the desired signal. Two methods to reduce background emission are described: one with low emission materials and the other with interference coating design. The first uses platforms composed of material that is transparent to mid-infrared light and therefore of low emissivity. Heating elements are embedded in the periphery of the heater. The transparent platform is composed of aluminum oxide, which is largely transparent for wavelengths less than about 8 μm. In the luminescent microscopy used to test the heater, an optical aperture blocks emission from the heating coils while passing light from the heated objects on the transparent center of the microheater. The amount of infrared light transmitted through the aperture was reduced by 90% as the aperture was moved from the highly emissive heater coils at 450 °C to the largely transparent center at the same temperature. The second method uses microheaters with integrated multilayer interference structures designed to limit background emission in the spectral range of the low-light luminescence object being measured. These heaters were composed of aluminum oxide, titanium dioxide, and platinum and were operated over a large range of temperatures, from 50 °C to 600 °C. At 600 °C, they showed a background photon emission only 1/800 that of a comparison heater without the multilayer interference structure. In this structure, the radiation background was sufficiently reduced to easily monitor weak thermoluminescent emission from CaSO 4 :Ce,Tb microparticles.