Reliability of laser safety eye wear in the femtosecond regime

Appropriate eye protection is a prerequisite for the safe operation of ultrashort laser systems in industrial and laboratory environments. In this paper we report on the measurement of the transmission of ion-doped phosphate glass filters for pulses having a center wavelength of 800nm, a duration of 10fs to 1.2ps and a fluence range of 0.01 to 30J/cm2. The measurements suggest, that the filter material preserves its protective features over the whole range. Saturation of absorption was only observed in the picosecond pulse duration range.