Correlating laser damage tests

This paper reports on efforts to correlate two commercially oriented laser damage tests. The two test facilities are located at Hughes Aircraft Co. and Montana Laser Optics*. A variety of coated laser optics have been tested in different test conditions and the damage levels compared. The test parameters varied were transverse modal content, spot size, sample conditioning history and, to a lesser degree, pulse width. The accumulated results were correlated by ascertaining the existence of a high probability functional relationship (linear fit) between pairs of damage levels for the same optics in different test conditions. A strong correlation was found between samples tested with the same irradiance history, regardless of the modal content and pulse width. Comparisons of the samples of different irradiance conditioning history were found not to correlate in general.