Comparison of pulse compression methods using only a pulse shaper

Spectral phase compensation is crucial in the production of ultrafast laser pulses. To produce very short pulses, it is necessary to correct higher-order phase terms beyond the typical second-order and third-order corrections. It is helpful to have a pulse shaper to perform the compression, and to use an integrated, deterministic pulse-shaper-only method for pulse compression and characterization. While several algorithms exist for this purpose, it is desirable to know which method is optimal. Using a computer simulation, we investigate the speed of several existing approaches in several typical pulse shaping cases. We also present and demonstrate experimentally a new method named Spectral Phase of Electric field by Analytic Reconstruction (SPEAR), a variant of the Chirp Reversal Technique (CRT). The chirp-scan method, CRT, and SPEAR are found to be the fastest methods to achieve a desired level of accuracy, for the cases investigated. (C) 2014 Optical Society of America