Effective compression of high-energy laser pulses in fiber–grating compressors

A simple theoretical model is proposed for describing the simultaneous effects of phase self-modulation and nonlinear birefringence in the course of propagation of laser pulses along a fiber waveguide. It is shown that the use of these two effects provides a satisfactory method for compressing high-energy laser pulses of energy three orders of magnitude higher than the energy attainable by compression of pulses in traditional systems. A report is given of experiments which support satisfactorily the proposed model.