Over time, optical components tend to degrade, potentially leading to reduced performance or even system failure. This consideration extends beyond technical concerns, impacting the economic, operational, and reputational aspects of various systems and industries. Ensuring a long lifetime for optics is crucial for maintaining consistent performance over extended periods. Thus, estimating the lifetime of optics is particularly significant in the context of long-term operations involving high repetition rate laser systems operating in ultrashort regimes or UV spectral wavelengths. However, accurately estimating optics lifetime for real-world applications poses a significant challenge due to the lack of appropriate methods or their accuracy. Furthermore, understanding the physical mechanisms behind the lifetime is essential for optimizing optics performance. To address this need, we conducted a study investigating the absorption effect on the lifetime of dielectric coatings. Using the photothermal common-path interferometry and laser-induced damage threshold testing, we sought to identify possible correlations between the nonlinear absorptance of optical coatings and their lifetime.
Recent studies suggest that fatigue effect in dielectric optical coatings is possibly associated with the presence of strong nonlinear absorption, however, up to now there was only indirect evidence for such hypothesis. One of the reasons for that was a technical rigor to characterize nonlinear absorption losses in optical coatings and a lack of pertinent experimental data. Recent advancement of common-path interferometry and LIDT testing allows us to overcome such limitations. In this study we examine nonlinear response and fatigue effect in single- and multilayer dielectric coatings below single shot damage threshold. Although there is no quantitative model that could predict fatigue from absorptance, we found an interesting correlation between nonlinear absorption and fatigue effect under comparable experimental conditions. These results help us to understand the mechanism of fatigue in optical coatings and possibly make more durable femtosecond optics.
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