Novel all-reflective stretcher for chirped-pulse amplification of ultrashort pulses

In this paper, we describe the design and operation of an all-reflective on -axis pulse stretcher (with only four simple elements) that has achieved st retching ratios of over 40 000. The design is insensitive to alignment erro rs and is simple to align. Optical aberrations in the system have an effect on the fourth-order phase term, but this can be used to compensate for mat erial dispersion, resulting in a quintic-phase-limited chirped-pulse-amplif ication system.