This special section on laser damage, Laser Damage V, the fifth in a series of special sections in Optical Engineering (OE), is focused on the diverse aspects of laser-induced damage (LID) of optical materials and components. Previous special sections were published in December 2012, December 2014, January 2017, and December 2018. The field of LID of optical materials considers a wide range of phenomena, processes, and effects attributed to the high-power, high-energy, and high-intensity laser-material interactions that irreversibly and permanently modify the optical properties of the materials. Examples of these permanent changes in materials are an increase of scattering or reduction of transmittance. LID has been a fundamental limitation to the performance of lasers and laser systems from the earliest days of the laser epoch to the present. It is a technical problem that is of global interest to the laser community. The major strategic aims of the research efforts of the LID community are to properly characterize threshold of LID and the identification approaches that increase the LID threshold. Over 50 years of research in LID of optical materials has resulted in tremendous progress in terms of understanding the fundamental mechanisms of LID and orders-of-magnitude improvements of LID threshold of laser optics. Despite the significant advances made, the problem of LID has not been generally solved.
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