Relationship between statistics of laser damage to solid transparent materials and statistics of structural defects

An analysis is made of the statistics of bulk laser damage on exposure to focused beams. A new method is proposed for determining experimentally the distribution function of the damage thresholds of defects in the low-threshold range. The method involves investigating fluctuations of the distance between the focus of a lens and the most distant damage. Experiments using silicon and gallium arsenide single crystals and pulsed CO₂ laser radiation are reported. It is concluded that the method can be applied to investigate defects in condensed media.