TY - JOUR A1 - Mann, Guido A1 - Jurke, Mathias A1 - Zoheidi, M. A1 - Krüger, Jörg T1 - Influence of mechanical stress on nanosecond laser-induced damage threshold of fused silica JF - Applied surface science N2 - Optical multimode fibers made of fused silica are widely used for transmission of high power laser pulses. Bending of fibers creates mechanical stress inside the material. The bend stress of a fiber can be calculated from bend radius, geometrical fiber parameters and Young's Modulus of the fiber core material and reaches typically values of 220 MPa. A thermo-elastic model of Kusov et al. predicts a quadratic dependence of laser-induced damage threshold fluence with applied stress. In the present study, fiber preform material F300 (Heraeus) was loaded mechanically with pressures up to 220 MPa representing 20% of the pressure resistance of fused silica. Bulk laser-induced damage thresholds (LIDT) were evaluated using a longitudinal multimode Q-switched Nd:YAG laser (1064 nm) at a pulse duration of 12 ns with polarization states parallel and perpendicular to the stress direction. LIDT of fused silica samples of about 700 J/cm2 were found. LIDT did not show a dependence on mechanical pressure and polarization state which is a consequence of the small ratio of maximum applied stress (220 MPa) to Young's Modulus of fused silica (72.5 GPa). KW - Laser-induced damage threshold KW - LIDT KW - Nanosecond laser KW - Fused silica KW - Mechanical stress KW - Optical fiber PY - 2012 DO - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apsusc.2012.01.049 SN - 0169-4332 SN - 1873-5584 VL - 258 IS - 23 SP - 9153 EP - 9156 PB - North-Holland CY - Amsterdam AN - OPUS4-26225 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -