Role of dispersion and compression ratio on the temporal contrast of SPM-broadened post-compressed pulses
Nonlinear pulse post-compression, mainly enabled by self-phase modulation (SPM), opens new avenues towards high peak power laser pulses at high average power while bypassing the need for a gain medium with large bandwidth. However, SPM-induced spectral broadening typically introduces spectral amplitude modulations as well as a chirp of third and higher orders, limiting the temporal contrast of the