Self‐Compression of Ultrahigh‐Peak‐Power Lasers

Abstract Pulse self‐compression can offer a more compact and efficient solution for improving the peak power of ultraintense laser pulses. By solving a modified nonlinear Schrödinger equation considering the fifth‐order susceptibility, it is found that self‐compression occurred even in a normally dispersive medium owing to the negative fifth‐order susceptibility inducing a mass of negative frequency chirp. Furthermore, negatively prechirped pulses enabled self‐compression at lower intensities, thus preventing damage to the medium. The optimal choices for prechirp, input intensity, and medium length are numerically analyzed. A proof‐of‐principle experiment confirmed the aforementioned theoretical findings. It is expected that petawatt or even exawatt laser pulses with 25 fs/15 fs transform‐limited pulse duration can be self‐compressed to ≈ 9.9 fs/7.6 fs in normally dispersive media, such as fused silica glass plate.