Analysis of Wavelength Dependent Wavefront Deformation in Thin Plate Compressors for Energetic Single-Cycle Laser Pulses

High peak power few-to-single-cycle pulses are challenging to achieve in the normal dispersion regime, hence it was demonstrated in only a very few cases above the 10 mJ energy level by using the thin plate technique [1], [2], where the greatest challenge is the control of spatio-temporal couplings (STCs). Devices capable to measure such properties of the ultrashort pulses are now available [3]–[5], however they are spectrally limited by their detectors. Numerical simulations offer an efficient way to predict the possible STCs for these ultra-broadband pulses.