Understanding nanosecond laser-induced damage in KTP crystals

What is it about?

High laser intensities can generate mechanical damage in transparent materials via nonlinear processes. This laser-induced damage phenomenon is limiting in designing high power photonics devices including compact lasers. Several different experimental series allowed us to propose a physical model how laser damage occurs in KTP and RTP crystals. The paper gives a short description of this model and summarizes the main experimental findings.

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Why is it important?

The article is unique in the sens that the model could only be developped due to a unique series of destructive experiments all conducted in comparable conditions, thus allowing the combination of the different observations, which rarely the case in nanosecond laser damage mesaurements. Knowledge about the physical mechanism of laser damage in KTP allows to avoid risky situations of usage for this material.