Essential Principles for Designing and Specifying Laser Optics

Laser engineers are leveraging new materials, unusual gain mechanisms, and innovative cavity designs to push laser performance into new regimes. Pulse lengths are getting shorter, peak power is getting larger, and photon energy is getting higher as systems move to short ultraviolet (UV) wavelengths. System designers looking to work with any laser need to take care to use optics designed to accommodate the peak power and energy density of their laser source. UV wavelengths are more energetic than their visible or infrared counterparts, so the concerns become more magnified for UV laser optics.