Symposium Welcome

摘要

On behalf of co-chairs of this meeting, Gregory Exarhos, Joseph Menapace, Detlev Ristau, and M. J. Soileau, I extend a hearty welcome to all participants of the annual Laser Damage Symposium - the Forty Seventh annual Symposium on Optical Materials for High-Power Lasers held at the NIST facility in Boulder, Colorado. This Symposium was founded by Art Guenther and Alex Glass in 1969 to bring together researchers of the newly emerging laser community to rapidly resolve a specific problem: why and how laser radiation damages materials that are assumed to be highly transparent. The "specific problem" turned out to be very non-trivial and quickly drove researchers to recognition of the need to join the efforts of scientists from optics, solid-state physics, materials science, chemistry, and other areas. The deeper the problem was investigated, the more aspects were brought to the attention of laser researchers and engineers. Within a few years of the first meeting in 1969, this conference became a major international platform for lively discussions and communication between researchers and engineers from academia, industry and military related to all aspects of laser-induced damage. Fluctuating from year to year, the stable number of presentations indicates the enormous vitality of this field and the continuously growing interest in the related topics. Among the motivating factors of research in this field are the continuous extension of the range of available laser parameters towards shorter pulses, shorter wavelengths, and higher powers; development of novel lasers; novel optical materials; and operation of traditional lasers under new environments. The amazing progress in the field of ultrashort laser pulses has provided new unique capabilities for better understanding of the fundamental mechanisms of laser-material interactions that initiate laser damage in optical materials. Ultrafast laser systems have also enabled the development of novel techniques and methods for the characterization of transition response of optical materials for high-power lasers. Rapid progress in material science has resulted in the development of new types of optical materials (e.g., ceramics and nanostructured surfaces) with a high potential of applications in high-power laser systems. All those developments as well as general progress in the field of high-power and high-energy lasers continuously support interest in the field of laser damage that is very likely to stay popular even in the following decades.