One problem frequently encountered in high‐power laser systems is the thermal extrinsic damage to the laser materials, which arises from absorbing inclusions. Absorbing inclusions are impurities with physical and optical properties which differ substantially from those of the host material. Such inclusions may absorb sufficient radiation from the incident laser beam to produce major stresses within the host. In this paper, estimates of the maximum tensile stress as a function of inclusion size, laser pulse width, and laser power are computed for the common precipitates in CdTe. Our computations suggest that the heating of such precipitates when subjected to power densities of about 100 MW/cm2may produce stresses comparable to or greater than the breaking strength of the CdTe host.
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