Small-beam damage test scaling for full-aperture damage performance

Abstract

The rapid deployment of high-energy laser systems has significantly pushed the practical limit of laser-induced optics damage. Most systems have chosen to scale the aperture of the laser system to operate within the damage limitations. However, most damage testing protocols do not take into consideration the sampling area of the damage testing beam with respect to the size of the extraction aperture. In this work, we review examples of laser systems where damage testing with small-scale S-on-1 results failed to predict the damage subsequently observed on a full aperture system. We provide guidance on how to adjust the post-coating damage testing protocol to gain confidence that the full-aperture optic will not be damaged during nominal high-fluence operations.