New IBS coatings boost performance of petawatt laser mirrors

Summary Simply put, the performance of a laser is just as high as the quality of its optics. Latest advances in petawatt laser technology have stimulated the development of large surface area, dielectrically coated mirrors to guide these demanding ultrashort pulse laser beams. We describe major achievements during the development and fabrication of ion beam sputtered 440 × 290 × 75 mm 3 beam transport mirrors for the HAPLS laser at ELI Beam‐lines. A laser damage threshold greater than 0.9 J/cm 2 was measured.