Abstract

In the laboratory practice of short pulse high intensity laser systems, angular dispersion has been regarded as one of the effects resulting in unwanted spatiotemporal distortions [1,2] of laser pulses on the target. Most recently a very effective and still simple method based on angular dispersion has been suggested to generate a single attosecond pulse from many cycle driving NIR laser pulse [3]. For the alignment of the stretcher-compressor stages of chirped pulse amplification systems as well as for generation of as pulses via the lighthouse effect, it is essential to measure the angular dispersion with high accuracy. Most of the common measurement techniques [1,4-6] are limited to determine angular dispersion along one spatial axis only, therefore beam rotation and iterative characterization is required. Recently, a two-dimensional detection method has been suggested for single-shot measurement of angular dispersion of broadband laser pulses [7]. Although this novel method would really make possible the determination of angular dispersion along the entire beam cross section, its accuracy may be challenged by the so far developed techniques. In this work, we introduce a comparative study on the accuracy of this novel 2D angular dispersion characterization technique.

© 2013 IEEE