Single grating laser pulse stretcher and compressor

摘要

A single-grating method and apparatus is described for a laser pulse stretcher and compressor. The method and apparatus exploits a two-layer vertical structure. One layer for the stretcher, and the other, for the compressor. Such a stretch-compressor is particularly suitable for using in a chirped-pulse or regenerative laser amplifier where laser wavelength tuning is desirable. When a change in the wavelength is applied, only one rotational adjustment is required to resume the alignment of the whole stretcher and compressor. This apparatus shows significant simplification in structure and alignment over the existing stretcher and compressor systems.