It is an essential aspect of science, technology and commerce to be able to communicate in a common language of units, procedure and phenomenology. Presently, there exist no such standards for the field of damage testing, leading to the present problems in scientific communication, comparison of test results and commercial activities. A necessary precursor to the standardization and proper cataloging of laser damage test data is a common nomenclature. There are many cases where parameters, phenomenology and test results are denoted by identical names. Moreover, there are cases where a single idea is known by multiple labels. This lack of standardization in the definitions and nomenclature leads to difficult, tedious and frequently unfruitful literature searches. This paper is intended to be the first step in the standardization of the field of laser induced damage by reviewing the literature and assigning in one review paper, a_set of exclusive definitions or labels to the various definitions of damage, threshold determination, spot size and pulse width. In making these assignments, a vehicle is provided for the necessary seminal .discussions leading to eventual adoption of accepted standards of procedure and definition for laser damage testing.
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