Diamond mirrors for high-power continuous-wave lasers

Abstract

High-power continuous-wave (CW) lasers are used in a variety of areas including industry, medicine, communications, and defense. Yet, conventional optics, which are based on multi-layer coatings, are damaged when illuminated by high-power CW laser light, primarily due to thermal loading. This hampers the effectiveness, restricts the scope and utility, and raises the cost and complexity of high-power CW laser applications. Here we demonstrate monolithic and highly reflective mirrors that operate under high-power CW laser irradiation without damage. In contrast to conventional mirrors, ours are realized by etching nanostructures into the surface of single-crystal diamond, a material with exceptional optical and thermal properties. We measure reflectivities of greater than 98% and demonstrate damage-free operation using 10 kW of CW laser light at 1070 nm, focused to a spot of 750 μm diameter. In contrast, we observe damage to a conventional dielectric mirror when illuminated by the same beam. Our results initiate a new category of optics that operate under extreme conditions, which has potential to improve or create new applications of high-power lasers.

Effect of multicomponent alloy coating on high frequency plasma ablation of diamond films

“…Diamond films have been applied to fields such as aircraft windows due to their resistance to sand erosion, hydrophobic properties and high transmittance in the infrared band [1][2][3][4][5]. When the aircraft speed reaches the sonic level, the thermal ablation effect must be considered, which will cause high-temperature plasma ablation on the windows and other parts [6-Corresponding author: *guoks@jihualab.ac.cn 8].…”

Linear-to-circular polarization conversion with full-silica meta-optics to reduce nonlinear effects in high-energy lasers

“…In addition to bandwidth constraints and aperture size limitations induced by optics manufacturing techniques, one of the main challenges is to increase laser damage resistance of optical materials in operating conditions. Several efforts are being made to improve the performance of laser optics manufacturing processes such as fused silica finishing process improvements 14,15 , multi-layer dielectric coatings optimization 15,16 , nanostructures engineering [17][18][19][20][21][22][23] . More disruptive concepts such as replacing optical materials by plasmas 24,25 were also proposed but still need to be developed and implemented.…”