As peak fluence of high power lasers is increased, it becomes necessary to tolerate damage on mirrors, polarizers. To study how different types of damage morphologies initiate and grow during repetitive illumination, hafnia-silica multilayer mirror and polarizer coatings were laser damage tested. The coatings were prepared by e-beam evaporation and irradiated with a 3-ns pulse at 1064 nm. The damage morphology was recorded after each shot to determine the types of damage that cause massive unstable failure and lower the optic`s functional damage threshold. Results were summarized on damage stability maps plotting the average damage size vs number of shots for fluences ranging from 10 to 40 J/cm{sup 2}. The maps indicate that the commonly observed damage morphologies (pits, flat bottom pits, scalds, outer layer delamination) have distinct growth behaviors and influence the value of the functional damage threshold differently. While pits are stable up to fluences as high as 40 J/cm{sup 2}, flat bottom pits can grow during repetitive illumination above a critical fluence of about 35 J/cm{sup 2}. Scalds are formed in the first shot and never grow at fluences below 40 J/cm{sup 2}. Finally, delaminates are highly unstable and have the potential for damaging the coating catastrophically above 15 J/cm{sup 2}. Results show that delaminate damage should be prevented; this knowledge has allowed coatings development efforts to focus on eliminating the origin of such damage morphology
