Prism Compressor - Comparison With Other Pulse Compressors

Comparison With Other Pulse Compressors

The most common other pulse compressor is based on gratings (see Chirped pulse amplification), which can easily create a much larger negative dispersion than a prism compressor (centimeters rather than tenths of millimeters). However, a grating compressor has losses of at least 30% due to higher-order diffraction and absorption losses in the metallic coating of the gratings. A prism compressor with an appropriate anti-reflection coating can have less than 2% loss, which makes it a feasible option inside a laser cavity. Moreover, a prism compressor is cheaper than a grating compressor.

Another pulse compression technique uses chirped mirrors, which are dielectric mirrors that are designed such that the reflection has a negative dispersion. Chirped mirrors are difficult to manufacture; moreover the amount of dispersion is rather small, which means that the laser beam must be reflected a number of times in order to achieve the same amount of dispersion as with a single prism compressor. This means that it is hard to tune. On the other hand, the dispersion of a chirped-mirror compressor can be manufactured to have a specific dispersion curve, whereas a prism compressor offers much less freedom. Chirped-mirror compressors are used in applications where pulses with a very large bandwidth have to be compressed.