Mechanisms for self-focusing in optical glasses

The relative contributions of the Kerr, electrostrictive, and thermal effects to the self-focusing thresholds of borosilicate crown glass, fused silica, and dense flint glass have been estimated from an analysis of damage-threshold data for linearly polarized and circularly polarized radiation. The measurements were made with a Nd:glass laser operating in the TEM00mode with a temporal pulsewidth of 25 ns. The Kerr effect appears to be the largest effect. The thermal effect is also significant. The electrostrictive effect is smallest. Reasonable values of the absorption coefficient are calculated from the thermal contribution. The results are in qualitative agreement with the work of others.