Investigation of bulk laser damage and absorption of laser light in CsLiB 6 O 10 crystals (Abstract Only)

High-power solid-state ultraviolet (UV) lasers by using a have been in high demand because of their convenient operation procedure. An effective technique for UV generation is cascaded sum-frequency generation pumped by the output of near-IR solids-state lasers. The performance of such solid-state UV lasers appears to depend on the ability and reliability of nonlinear optical (NLO) crystals that are employed for laser frequency conversion. Discovery of CsLiB 6 O 10 (CLBO) crystals have enabled the production of such practical high-power all solid-state UV lasers. In 2001, UV output power up to 23.0 W by fourth harmonic generation of Nd:YAG laser was achieved. It is fact that laser-induced damage of NLO crystal is a limiting factor on reliable operation of high-power solid-state UV lasers. Bulk laser-induced damage of NLO crystal is related to the crystal's quality. In this paper, we have investigated the relationship among the bulk laser-induced damage threshold (LIDT), dislocation density and absorption of laser light in CLBO crystals with various crystallinity. The bulk LIDT of CLBO increased with decreasing dislocation density. High-quality crystals with a higher LIDT (15 - 18 GW/cm 2 ) have a lower dislocation density of 6.6 x 10 3 /cm 2 than that of conventional CLBO (~15.0 x 10 3 /cm 2 ). The relationships between crystal quality and absorption of laser light will be presented.