Optical distortions and birefringence in high power laser windows: model and computer code

Area of Science:

• Materials Science
• Optical Engineering
• Computational Physics

Background:

• Laser-heated and pressure-loaded windows are critical components in various optical systems.
• Predicting optical distortions and birefringence in these windows is essential for system performance.
• Previous models relied on restrictive approximations for thermal and stress analysis.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a general optical model for predicting wave front distortions and birefringence.
• To create a computer code integrating thermal and stress computations with the optical model.
• To provide accurate predictions for cubic lattice window materials under operational stress and temperature variations.

Main Methods:

• Developed a general optical model incorporating stress and temperature effects.
• Created a computer code to integrate stress and thermal computations with the optical model.
• Utilized advanced stress and thermal codes to avoid restrictive approximations in predicting window distributions.

Main Results:

• The model accurately predicts optical wave front distortions and birefringence.
• The integrated computer code successfully simulates window behavior under laser heating and pressure loading.
• Predictions from the code show good agreement with experimental results.

Conclusions:

• The developed optical model and computer code offer a more accurate method for predicting window performance.
• This approach overcomes limitations of previous approximate methods.
• The findings are valuable for the design and optimization of optical systems utilizing such windows.