Effect of beam diameter for high accuracy laser damage testing

With the development of the study on laser induced damage threshold testing for optics, many factors need to be considered in measuring and showing the LIDT efficiently and accurately. In this paper, R to 1 test method was used in the laserinduced damage testing under different beam diameter. The new concept of R to 1 average damage threshold was used. The relationship between damage threshold and testing beam diameter was discussed. It shows that laser induced damage threshold continuously decreases as the testing beam diameter increases. When the testing beam diameter increases to a certain value, LIDT tends to be invariable.