Just to add to what was said, no material has a perfect transmission rate either. Some light will be absorbed by any lens or mirror. When you get into some of the upper power ranges of some lasers they actually start to destroy the optics and even the lasing material itself too after a time.
Just to add to what was said, no material has a perfect transmission rate either. Some light will be absorbed by any lens or mirror. When you get into some of the upper power ranges of some lasers they actually start to destroy the optics and even the lasing material itself too after a time.
Absolutely. There are so many problems with materials and lasers that it seems like we've hit the limits of easy lasing. While I haven't had much works with solid lasing mediums, I have seen Nd:YAG laser rods that were destroyed because the edges of the rod which were ground to a Brewsters angle were slightly chipped and the flash pump tubes caused such a thermal shock in them that they literally exploded. I have also seen gallium arsenide optics get cracked and pitted by CO2 lasers that were driven too hard outside of their operating range. Also saw a fiber laser get destroyed because someone got the fiber aperture dirty with grease. Damned shame because it wasn't very old and was expensive to repair.
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