We demonstrate that, by changing the altitude and the azimuth incident
angles on the gratings of the conventional grating-pair compressor us
ed in chirped-pulse amplification, an extra degree of freedom is added
. This results in a continuous adjustment of second-, third-, and four
th-order dispersions, which allows one to compensate for those dispers
ions that originated in the expansor or in the amplifier medium as a r
esult of material dispersion or self-phase modulation, even with small
out-of-plane tilts of the expansor and compressor. Analytical calcula
tions of the high-order dispersions introduced by this compressor and
examples for a pulse with a central wavelength at 800 nm are presented
. (C) 1997 Optical Society of America.