QUARTIC PHASE COMPENSATION WITH A STANDARD GRATING COMPRESSOR

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.