Advanced dielectric grating technology for high-energy petawatt lasers

We describe the design, fabrication, and test of large-area multilayer dielectric gratings for high-energy petawatt lasers. 80/spl times/40-cm/sup 2/, 1780-mm/sup -1/ gratings have been fabricated, exhibiting high diffraction efficiency and >4 J/cm/sup 2/, 10-ps damage thresholds on witness samples.