Compression of femtosecond laser pulses in thin one-dimensional photonic crystals - art. no. 016602

We demonstrate experimentally the effect of compression of femtosecond lase r pulses in thin (a few micrometers) one-dimensional photonic crystal. We s how that the compression effect is reasonably described by the linear dispe rsion properties of the photonic crystal itself and the quadratic dispersio n approximation cannot be efficiently used for the description of interacti on of the femtosecond laser pulses with the thin photonic crystal. For give n parameters of the femtosecond pulse it leads to the existence of the opti mal dimension of the photonic crystal from the point of view of the compres sion efficiency. Due to the wide spectral width of the femtosecond laser pu lses the high-order dispersion effects play an important role in pulse prop agation in photonic crystals and as a result the pulse compression occurs f or both positive and negative signs of chirp of the incoming femtosecond pu lses.