The United States of America As Represented by the United States

Schott Glass Technologies, Inc.

The United States of America As Represented by the Department of Energy

John H Campbell

Stephen Anthony Payne

Joseph S Hayden

Alexander J Marker, Iii

Charles Robert Wolfe

Howard T Powell

Yuiko T Hayden

James E Murray

Melanie L Elder

Mark R Kozlowski

Edward S Jessop

C Robert Wolfe

Frank Rainer

Michael Staggs

Mary Kay Aston

Richard E Lyon

Michael O Riley

A Cu-doped/Fe-doped low expansion glass ceramic composition comprising:

Cladding glass ceramic for use in high powered lasers

In a high energy laser system utilizing phosphate laser glass components to mplify the laser beam, the laser system requires a generated laser beam having an emission bandwidth of less than 26 nm and the laser glass components consist essentially of (on an oxide composition basis):

Phosphate glass useful in high energy lasers

The invention comprises a method for producing optical thin films with a high laser damage threshold and the resulting thin films. The laser damage threshold of the thin films is permanently increased by irradiating the thin films with a fluence below an unconditioned laser damage threshold.

Permanent laser conditioning of thin film optical materials

Large neodymium glass laser disks for disk amplifiers such as those used in the Nova laser require an edge cladding which absorbs at 1 micrometer. This cladding prevents edge reflections from causing parasitic oscillations which would otherwise deplete the gain. Nova now utilizes volume-absorbing monolithic-glass claddings which are fused at high temperature to the disks. These perform quite well but are expensive to produce. Absorbing glass strips are adhesively bonded to the edges of polygonal disks using a bonding agent whose index of refraction matches that of both the laser and absorbing glass. Optical finishing occurs after the strips are attached. Laser disks constructed with such claddings have shown identical gain performance to the previous Nova disks and have been tested for hundreds of shots without significant degradation.

Composite polymer-glass edge cladding for laser disks

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Livermore, CA, United States of America

John H Campbell