Laser conditioning methods of hafnia-silica multilayer mirrors

Large aperture multilayer hafnia silica high reflector coatings at 1064 nm, deposited by reactive electron-beam deposition, were prepared to examine different laser conditioning methods for manufacturing high fluence optics in the National Ignition Facility. Laser conditioning is a process where the damage threshold of the coating is increased or the damage that is created is minimized so that it does not grow upon further irradiation. Two laser conditioning methods were examined for coatings deposited from only oxide starting materials. Off-line laser conditioning consists of raster scanning a mirror past a 1 mm diameter Gaussian beam over the entire clear aperture; a process that takes approximately 24 hours per scan. On-line laser conditioning consisted of a large aperture 300 mm x 300 mm beam from the Beamlet laser that irradiated the entire full clear aperture of a series of mirrors; a process that was limited by a 2-4 hour shot rate. In both cases a six-step process was used with the mirror first irradiated at a low fluence, then successively higher fluences increased in equal increments up to the peak laser operating fluence. Mirrors that were only partially laser conditioned damaged catastrophically while fully conditioned mirrors survived fluences exceeding the safemore » operating Beamlet fluence. An alternative off-line laser conditioning method was examined for coatings deposited from hafnia or metallic hafnium sources. Single-step laser conditioning consists of off-line raster scanning an optic at the peak operating fluence, thus decreasing the laser conditioning cost by reducing the number of scans and required laser conditioning stations to process all the mirrors for the National Ignition Facility. Between pulses the optic is stepped approximately one fourth of the l/e* Gaussian beam diameter so each area of the coating is irradiated by different segments of the beam starting at a low fluence at the outer edge of the beam diameter and increasing to the peak fluence in the center of the beam. The one-step conditioning results appear positive, but the influence of the coating improvements due to the metallic hafnium process on laser conditioning is undefined.« less