Study of dispersion compensation effect of femtosecond laser amplifier using home-made third-order autocorrelator

Detailed experimental and theoretical analyses of the dispersion compensation effect in a femtosecond laser amplifier are presented. It is confirmed that the temporal structures in the vicinity of the central peak of the amplified laser pulse are primarily caused by the uncompensated third- and/or fourth-order dispersion. The specific detrimental roles played by the third- and fourth-order dispersions such as resulting in the formation of asymmetrical pulse shapes and satellite pulses are revealed and experimentally verified with third-order autocorrelation measurements. With the help of a third-order autocorrelator, it is more efficient and accurate to optimize the third- and fourth-order dispersion compensation when the roundtrip times of a laser pulse inside the regenerative amplifier changes. For practical applications, in order to achieve laser pulses with highest quality, namely with minimum pulse energy in their wings, it is imperative to optimize the dispersion-control parameters while monitoring the laser pulses with a third-order autocorrelator.