An absorber shaped, usually as a cone or wedge cavity, to trap all of a beam's power and turn it into heat without sending reflections back into the room. Low-power dumps are black anodized aluminum; high-power versions are water-cooled and rated in kilowatts. Every beam that leaves the useful path, from rejected polarizations to transmitted leakage, should end in a dump rather than a wall or a card.
Rejected beam from the cube is hitting the enclosure wall, put a beam dump there before anyone turns the power up.
Also heard as
- dump
- beam stop
- beam block
- beam trap
Related terms
Ghost
A weak stray beam from a back-surface reflection that travels off in an unexpected direction or focuses somewhere it should not.
Class 4
The highest laser hazard class, for beams that can injure eyes and skin even by diffuse reflection and can start fires.
Pickoff
An optic, usually an uncoated wedge, that samples a small fraction of a beam and sends it to a diagnostic.
Glint
A brief, bright reflection of a laser beam off a shiny object such as a tool, screw head, mount or jewelry.