Temporal aberrations due to misalignments of a stretcher-compressor system and compensation

Sensitivity of alignment is one of the major issues in the stretcher-compressor devices used for chirped pulse amplification. In this paper we discuss the temporal aberrations induced by the different kinds of misalignments of the gratings and we emphasize the importance of spatially transverse effects. We discuss simple criteria for minimizing these faults. Finally, we introduce the basic principles of self-compensation and present such a set-up based on symmetry considerations.<
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