Special Section Guest Editorial: Laser Damage VIII

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This Special Section on Laser Damage, Laser Damage VIII, is the eighth in the series of special sections of Optical Engineering focused on the diverse aspects of laser-induced damage (LID) of optical materials, surfaces, and components.Previous special sections on laser damage can be found in previous volumes of this journal.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7] The field of LID in optical materials encompasses a broad range of phenomena, processes, and effects associated with the high-power and/or high-energy laser-material interactions that irreversibly modify the optical properties of the materials.Examples of these permanent changes in materials are increased scattering, reduced transmittance, or modification of surface morphology.LID has been a fundamental limitation to the performance of lasers and laser systems since the earliest days of the laser epoch.Initially described as a "small" technical problem, in a few years LID became of global interest to the high-power and high-energy laser communities as a major impediment to the increase of output power and/or energy of such lasers systems.The major strategic aims of research efforts in this field are to properly characterize LID and identify approaches for reducing it.Over more than a half a century of research on LID of optical materials has delivered tremendous progress in terms of understanding the fundamental mechanisms of LID as well as orders-of-magnitude improvements in damage resistance of high-power laser optics.Despite the significant advances made, the problem of LID has not been generally solved for arbitrary lasers and material parameters.Moreover, further development of laser technology and research progress in adjacent areas motivates continued efforts in this field.As LID is a fundamental limitation to the advancement of high-power and high-energy lasers, the global laser community is keenly interested in all topics related to laser damage.A major driving motivation of the enduring interest in LID is the continued development of novel laser systems.These new systems and sources probe new ranges of laser parameters, demanding novel materials, optics, and coatings.Current trends creating these new challenges include generation of sub-femtosecond pulses (i.e., attosecond duration with 1 as = 10 -18 seconds), reduction of laser wavelength towards deep-ultraviolet (sub-130 nm) range of the spectrum, extension of wavelength of highpower laser systems towards midinfrared range (2 to 10 μm), and increase of peak power of laser systems well above the terawatt level.The development and operation of large-scale petawatt laser facilities around the globe, such as the National Ignition Facility (NIF) and Omega Laser (USA), ELI Beamlines (European Union), Mega Joule Laser (France), SG-III (China), and ILE/Osaka University Large-Scale Laser (Japan), continuously drive the need for advancement in LID research worldwide.In addition to the interest in LID studies generated by the new laser systems, the vibrant global market of laser optics drives demands for greater quality and lower prices with important contributions from the laser-damage community.This special section is inspired by the community that gathers each year for the SPIE Laser Damage Symposium, which is also known as the Symposium on Optical Materials for High-Power Lasers, or simply the LD conference.All these terms refer to the same annual SPIE event.

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