Prism Compressor, Ultrashort Laser Pulses, Tsunami

The PC-TS-KT Prism Compressor for Ultrashort Pulses is an easy to assemble setup to deliver the shortest pulse to your sample or device. A typical femtosecond pulse can have anywhere from 5 to 100 nm of bandwidth around the center wavelength of the laser. When a femtosecond pulse with that much bandwidth passes through any optical material such as a lens, beam-splitter, or Faraday isolator, it will experience pulse broadening due to group velocity dispersion (GVD). The good news is that the pulse broadening effects of GVD can be reversed and recompressed by using pairs of prisms, gratings or chirped mirrors. The Newport Prism Compressor kit is based on prism pair setup. This kit allows the user to assemble the pre-selected and certified off-the-shelf components and put them together for a cost-effective dispersion compensation solution. The Prism Compressor for Ultrashort Laser Pulses application note has detailed information on how to assemble the kit and choose critical distances most suitable for your application. All of the mounts and optics in this kit have been certified by our scientists in the Newport Technology and Applications Center to be compatible with the Spectra-Physics Mai Tai™, Tsunami™, Spitfire ultrafast Ti:Sapphire lasers, OPAL OPO and OPA. Due to the polarization selectivity of the Brewster’s angle cut prisms, this kit is designed for the horizontal polarization. For vertically polarized laser beams, such as output from Tsunami, a periscope or half wave-plate will be needed to rotate the polarization by 90º.