Gratings for high-energy petawatt lasers

Abstract

To enable high-energy petawatt laser operation we have developed the processing methods and tooling that produced both the world's largest multilayer dielectric reflection grating and the world's highest laser damage resistant gratings. We have successfully delivered the first ever 80 cm aperture multilayer dielectric grating to LLNL's Titan Intense Short Pulse Laser Facility. We report on the design, fabrication and characterization of multilayer dielectric diffraction gratings.