Efficient compression of high-energy laser pulses

Limitations caused by stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) for laser pulse compression in traditional fiber-grating compressors are discussed. It is shown that the scheme utilizing fibers of length L exceeding the length of the dispersion walk off L/sub walk/ /sub off/ of pump pulses and SRS permits one to obtain high-contrast compressed pulses, their energy being no more than a few nJ, and the ultimate width being proportional to the square root of the initial pulse width. For the compression utilizing fibers of length L>