Femtosecond laser induced damage characterization of transmission volume phase gratings

A procedure to characterize the induced damage and the incubation effects in volume transmission gratings under femtosecond laser pulse train illumination is presented. It was also developed a formalism that explains the damage processes. Our proposal was employed on glass gratings to show the effectiveness of the method and its potential to design transmission gratings with enhanced laser induced damage threshold. This procedure is able to be extended to any transmission grating composed by chemically non-uniform material, opening up new perspectives to femtosecond laser pulse shaping.