Laser-Induced Damage And Two-Photon Absorption Measurements In CdTe

We report the results of laser-induced damage and nonlinear absorption measured for CdTe and other selected II-VI materials. These studies were conducted using pulsed 1.06 pm radiation from a Nd:YAG laser. The laser pulsewidth was varied from approximately 40 psec to 9,000 psec (9 nsec). The lasernduced breakdown irradiance measured for CdTe over this pulsewidth range scaled as tp -1/2 [tp is the laser pulsewidth (FWHM)]. Nonlinear phtoacoustic spectroscopy was used to monitorPthe nonlinear and linear absorption in the samples in which laser-induced damage thresholds were measured.