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Apart from the high damage resist optical components, the high threshold beam dump materials are also of paramount importance for developing the high power ultrafast lasers, particularly, for the high repetition rate laser systems. The high power beam dumps requires the highly absorptive and high damage threshold optical materials which can prevent the back reflection and overheating. In order to evaluate the optimal performance of the various beam dump materials, we characterized the optical properties of these materials and examined the damage threshold measurements. We developed a LIDT test station to measure the damage threshold of various kinds of optical components for ELI Beamlines facility. The developed LIDT test station can offer the measurements at various laser parameters and environmental conditions that are similar to usage conditions of the ELI beamlines lasers. The damage resistance of various beam dump materials was tested using LIDT test station at ELI Beamlines. The various beam dump materials include highly absorptive (>99.8%) vantablack coatings and different absorptive glasses. The LIDT tests were performed using 800nm, ultrafast laser beams with pulse duration of 40fs at 1 kHz repetition rate. The LIDT test methods such as S-on-1 and R-on-1 were used for determining the damage threshold. From the presented results, we discuss the best beam dump materials with high damage resistance for high power laser systems. |
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