Damage threshold characterization of gas grating

Gas gratings have emerged as a compelling solution for manipulating high-energy lasers because of their exceptional damage threshold and inherent immunity to debris. We have successfully created gas gratings in an ozone-doped mixture using interfering deep-ultraviolet lasers, achieving a diffraction efficiency above 99% for a nanosecond probe beam. In this work, we measured the damage threshold of these gas optics using a focused 532 nm 5 ns probe, reaching a peak fluence above the gas breakdown threshold. We characterized the diffraction efficiency of gas gratings at these extreme fluences, as well as the diffracted beam profile and wavefront. These results support the operation of gas gratings at fluences two-to-three orders of magnitude higher than the damage threshold of conventional solid optics (typically 1-10 J/cm^2), suggesting the viability of gas gratings as damage-resistant optics for efficient manipulation of intense lasers.



This work was partially supported by NNSA Grant DE-NA0004130, NSF Grant PHY-2308641, and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory LDRD program (24-ERD-001) under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract DE-AC52-07NA27344.