Patent ID: 7552601

Claim:
A method for producing an optical component of quartz glass, said method comprising: producing an SiO 2 soot body, vitrifying the soot body in a vacuum so as to form a cylindrical quartz glass blank with a hydroxyl group content in a range from 10 to 250 wt ppm, annealing the quartz glass blank so as to form a quartz glass cylinder having a fictive temperature above 1050° C., surrounding a contour of the optical component to be produced with an overdimension, removing part of the overdimension adjacent the axial ends of the quartz glass cylinder, loading the quartz glass cylinder with hydrogen by heating said quartz glass cylinder in a hydrogen-containing atmosphere at a temperature below 500° C. so as to generate in said quartz glass cylinder a mean hydrogen content in the range of 0.1×10 16 molecules/cm 3 to 5.0×10 16 molecules/cm 3 .