Ultrahigh-Damage-Threshold Gaseous Diffractive Lenses for Femtosecond to Nanosecond Lasers

Constructing a practical inertial fusion energy plant or a miniaturized laser-driven particle accelerator requires optics that can withstand laser intensities beyond solid-state optical damage thresholds and resist exposure to energetic particles. Gaseous holographic optic can meet these stringent requirements. Here, we present the first experimental demonstration of a tunable diffractive gaseous lens that can both steer and focus nanosecond to femtosecond-duration beams. We form the optic via photodissociation of ozone by two interfering ultraviolet nanosecond imprint beams (6 mJ, 5 ns, 266 nm) in an ozone-oxygen-carbon-dioxide gas flow at atmospheric conditions. The optic manipulates a reading beam that is substantially more energetic (220 mJ, 5 ns, 532 nm) than the imprint beams at an incident fluence above solid-state damage thresholds with greater than 50% efficiency. The lens behavior closely follows predictions from the paraxial wave equation. Gaseous optics may enable arbitrary, damage-resistant manipulation of intense light for next-generation high-power laser applications.