Interpretation of the result of a laser damage measurement

This paper presents an interpretation of the meaning of the result of a damage measurement. The motivation of this work is to understand under what conditions identical results can be expected from measurements on samples coming from the same production process. The interpretation is developed from the properties of a generalized probability of damage that represents the manufacturing process, M(phi). The probabilities of damage for each sample in the production run, P(phi) is modeled as a sampling of M(phi). The P(phi) are then analyzed using first order statistics to determine the likely outcomes of the measurements. It is hoped that this work will being to shed some light on questions of damage test sample to sample variation and repeatability. This work is also intended to help develop consensus on expectations for measurement accuracy and precision.