Continuous melting of phosphate laser glass

A revolution in optical glass technology is continuous melting of large and high-homogeneous glass, which means, for example, variation of refractive index is less than 1x10-6 within one glass block. Difference between one part and another part is only 0.000001. How to make these high-quality glass? Such kind of homogeneity is necessary for laser glass. This particular manufacturing technology is the melting apparatus, using a large stirrer to get whole homogeneity and removing striae with a small stirrer. With this double mixer pot, the authors achieved to make homogeneous laser glass successfully. But next coming laser after 100KJ NOVA of LLNL, to achieve breakeven, will be megajoule laser apparatus. The quantity of glass necessary for this apparatus was 4,000 pcs. Osaka University is now using 300pcs, so 10 times more pieces are needed and it's going to be 150ton of glass. In this paper the author derived an equation between the glass volume of a slab and the volume of stirring chamber in continuous melting furnace and proved the equation can be applied to get 10-6 homogeneity for glasses