The high-energy/high-power section of the NIF laser system contains 7360 meter-scale optics. Advanced optical materials and fabrication technologies needed to manufacture the NIF optics have been developed and put into production at key vendor sites. Production rates are up to 20 times faster and per-optic costs 5 times lower than could be achieved prior to the NIF. In addition, the optics manufactured for NIF are better than specification giving laser performance better than the design. A suite of custom metrology tools have been designed, built and installed at the vendor sites to verify compliance with NIF optical specifications. A brief description of the NIF optical wavefront specifications for the glass and crystal optics is presented. The wavefront specifications span a continuous range of spatial scale-lengths from 10 µm to 0.5 m (full aperture). We have continued our multi-year research effort to improve the lifetime (i.e. damage resistance) of bulk optical materials, finished optical surfaces and multi-layer dielectric coatings. New methods for post-processing the completed optic to improve the damage resistance have been developed and made operational. This includes laser conditioning of coatings, glass surfaces and bulk KDP and DKDP and well as raster and full aperture defect mapping systems. Research on damage mechanisms continues to drive the development of even better optical materials.

Laser-induced pinpoint bulk damage of deuterated potassium dihydrogen phosphate at 351 nm is shown to depend on the propagation direction relative to the crystallographic axes and on growth temperature in addition to the previously reported dependence on continuous filtration. Pulse-length scaling is also consistent with earlier reports. The leading hypothesis for the cause of pinpoint damage is absorbing nanoparticle impurities, and our results are consistent with but not conclusive for that model. Advances in technology have led to greatly improved damage resistance.

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