Laser-induced damage growth with small and large beams: comparison between laboratory experiments and large-scale laser data

Experiments have been performed to measure the rate of laser-induced damage growth at the rear surface of fused silica windows at 1064, 1053 and 351 nm. One test bench delivered 9 ns monomode gaussian pulses at 10 Hz and 1064 nm. The size of the focused beam on the sample was a few mm2. Another test bench delivered 2.5 ns single or multimode pulses at 1053 and 351 nm. The focused spot on the sample was a few cm2. We compare and discuss our laboratory experimental results, the larger scale ALISE laser data and other results obtained at LULI.