High precision elimination of angular chirp in CPA laser systems with large stretching factors or high bandwidth

We present a novel and highly sensitive method to determine the residual angular dispersion of high-power laser pulses after stretching, amplification, and re-compression of the pulses in a chirped-pulse amplification laser system. This method is based on the intentional deflection of a part of the the spectrum within the compressor and aligning the centers of gravity of the two resulting and separated foci with largest possible spectral separation in the far field. Using this technique, we were able to reduce the residual angular dispersion on pulses to less than 0.05 μrad/nm in the vertical plane and less than 0.03 μrad/nm in the horizontal plane, respectively. With this method, it is possible to minimize the deviation of the actual peak intensity for the focused laser pulses to less than 2 % of its theoretical limit.