Laser polishing and laser form correction of fused silica optics

Abstract

With laser polishing, the roughness of ground glass surfaces can be significantly reduced. With process speeds up to 1 cm 2 /s independent of the processed surface shape, the resulting roughness is already sufficient for illumination optics. To further reduce the roughness, the polishing process itself will be optimized and moreover combined with a subsequent laser based form correction. Within this paper, results of laser polishing as well as laser form correction and combination of the two processes are presented and discussed.