Enhancing the temporal contrast and peak power of femtosecond laser pulses

It is shown that a nonlinear polarization interferometer and a chirped mirror enable enhancement of the contrast of high-power laser pulses with a duration of tens and hundreds of femtoseconds by several orders of magnitude and simultaneously a several-fold reduction of their duration. Different variants of interferometers based on cubic nonlinearity in KDP and DKDP crystals are considered. The interferometer and chirped mirror parameters are optimized aimed at enhancing the peak power of the compressed pulse.