Abstract
Large-aperture harmonic generation is rapidly becoming a standard practice in laser-fusion research. At present, harmonic generation is commonly done with bare nonlinear crystals, that is, crystal plates not protected from atmospheric degradation and not relieved of Fresnel loss by antireflection windows and index-matching fluid. This situation has been dictated by the recently observed aperture-dependent nonlinear loss in harmonic generation cells using layers of conventional index-matching fluids (Cargille 5610 and FC 104). At 4.5-GW/cm2 input intensity on an 8-cm aperture cell, up to 30 J out of 160-J total, was transversely scattered out of the beam. While the overall cost of using bare crystals can be tolerated at the small apertures (10-15 cm) in use at present, for the 74-cm harmonic crystal arrays to be used on the Nova and Novette lasers, loss-free and degradation-free performance is required.
© 1981 Optical Society of America
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