Abstract
The influence of laser beam size on laser-induced damage performance, especially damage probability and the laser-induced damage threshold (LIDT), is investigated. It is found that damage probability is dependent on beam size when various damage precursors with different potential behaviors are involved. This causes the damage probability and the LIDT to be different between cases under a large-aperture beam and a small-aperture beam. Moreover, the fluence fluctuation of the large-aperture laser beam brings out hot spots, which move randomly across the beam from shot to shot. Thus this leads the most probable maximum fluence after many shots at any location on the optical component to be several times the average beam fluence. These two effects result in the difference in the damage performance of the optical component between the cases under a large-aperture and small-aperture laser.