Abstract

Ultrashort optical pulses can be easily distorted and reshaped in undesirable ways in the use of a variety of common optical components such as mirrors and polarizers or by diffractive, refractive, or absorptive elements. Group velocity dispersion problems can arise in the generation of pulses inside a laser cavity and in pulse compression as well as in simple propagation, reflection, and focusing, Since all these are necessary for work in linear and nonlinear optics with ultrashort pulses, we must have the capability to measure and compensate for these errors. We present experimental studies on the frequency-dependent optical group delay for various optical components.

© 1988 Optical Society of America