High-intensity laser beam attenuation based on two-step absorption mechanism

Due to rapid progress in the development of high-power tunable visible lasers, it is expected that eye protection from tunable lasers in the open field will be needed in the near future. A nonlinear method is proposed that will transmit low-intensity light, but absorb light at high intensities. This high-intensity attenuator is based on the use of a liquid or solid made up of molecules having the property of undergoing two-photon photodissociation through most of the visible part of the spectrum. This material must also have the additional property that one of the products of the photodissociation is a one-photon absorber throughout the same wavelength region. It is suggested that the laser beam intensity can be attenuated by a large factor through these two-step absorption mechanisms, and that if the one-photon absorbing product is quenched by collisions with some component of the liquid in a time that is small compared with the laser pulse length, very large attenuation can be achieved from the built-up concentration of one-photon absorbers. Thus, the early part of a laser pulse is attenuated by two-photon absorption only, but the later parts of the pulse can be attenuated by factors as large as 10⁵. Using a double-pass geometry, the leading edge of the pulse can be absorbed by linearly absorbing species formed on the first pass. The double-pass method, with an optical delay line, can even work well with picosecond pulses.