High power optics and its new manifestations

Abstract

The advent of the laser has placed stringent requirements on the fabrication, performance and quality of optical elements employed within systems for most practical applications. Their high power performance is generally governed by three distinct steps, firstly the absorption of incident optical radiation (governed primarily by various absorption mechanisms); secondly, followed by a temperature increase and response governed primarily by thermal properties and finally the elements thermo-optical and thermomechanical response, e.g., distortion, stress birefringenous fracture, etc. All of which needs to be understood in the design as efficient, compact, reliable and useful for many applications high power systems, under a variety of operating conditions, pulsed and continuous wave, rep-rated or burst mode of varying duty cycles

High power optics

“…This phenomenon is particularly important for the optics of high power level, highpulse repetition rate lasers, which are being actively developed. In the review, we have recently published in Laser Physics Journal, 1 the thermal stress state of a solid is analysed. In this state, time is treated as an independent variable used in differentiation.…”

Heat Transfer and Thermal Deformation Characteristics of Liquid-Cooled Laser Mirror

“…The thermally induced deformation of mirror surface restricts the development of high-energy laser (HEL) systems, especially with the increase of laser power and working time. Water-cooled mirror, employing heat sinks with mini/microchannels or micropores for cooling, is an effective way to limit the thermal distortion of mirror surface [1, 2]. However, the thermal deformation characteristic of water-cooled mirror is closely related to the geometric dimension, channel shape, configuration, inlet/outlet arrangement, and material [3].…”