Posts on this page of our Blog relate to products and information from Manx Precision Optics (MPO).
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A damage threshold is not one number. It is the product of at least five variables, each contributing to the figure printed on a datasheet. Substrate preparation, surface roughness, coating architecture, and defect density all directly influence how much fluence a coating can survive. Test methodology does not change the physical threshold itself, but it … Continue reading
A 99.7% reflectivity mirror and a 99.3% reflectivity mirror can have the exact same coating design. The difference is the angle of incidence for the light hitting the mirror. This issue catches out more optical setups than people admit. A coating optimized and quoted for normal incidence will not deliver the same performance, or survive … Continue reading
Predicting the laser-induced damage threshold (LIDT) in the picosecond (ps) regime has been a persistent problem in high-power laser design. Reliable models exist either side of it, for nanosecond (ns) and femtosecond (fs) pulses, but the ps regime itself has lacked one. Manx Precision Optics (MPO)ββ has addressed this lack by calculating the required LIDT … Continue reading
Ultrafast laser systems operating in the femtosecond regime, particularly at high pulse energies, leave very little margin for material effects inside the optical path. In this context, the choice between a solid roof prism and a roof mirror becomes architectural, not just geometric. In many folded beam paths, delay lines, and resonators, roof prisms are … Continue reading
In high-energy laser systems, a window is not a passive component. An uncoated surface reflects around 4 percent of incident light. In high-gain or high-peak power systems, that reflection can destabilize cavities, introduce parasitic oscillations, and reduce usable output. Effective AR-coated windows must address several factors: Reflectivity control β Single wavelength AR designs can reduce … Continue reading
In ultrafast laser systems, pulse degradation is often traced back to dispersion that was not fully considered at the specification stage. As pulse durations move towards sub-100 fs, spectral bandwidths widen. Mirrors that once covered 40 or 60 nm may now be expected to maintain controlled reflectance and stable group delay dispersion (GDD) across 100 … Continue reading