Abstract

Spectral broadening and pulse compression of ultrashort pulses from high peak power lasers (10 MW-GW) is usually performed in gas-filled, photonic bandgap or Kagome-type hollow core fibers [1]. Recently, a new method relying on a waveguide-like periodic structure consisting of focusing elements (curved dispersive mirrors) and nonlinear media was demonstrated [2, 3]. Both all bulk and gas filled geometries [4, 5] were successfully realized in high average and peak power regimes pushing the broadened spectrum to sub-10 fs Fourier limit [6]. In contrast to fibers, the sign of the overall net dispersion and its profile including higher order dispersion terms can be readily engineered in the quasi-waveguide approach. This advantage becomes increasingly interesting at high peak power levels in combination with nonlinear effects such as soliton supercontinuum generation, soliton self-frequency shifting and self-compression which has been shown for example in [7], were self-compression in a multi-pass cell has been demonstrated at a wavelength of 1550 nm with a pulse compression ratio of 2.8.

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