Positive and negative chirping of laser pulses shorter than 100 fsec in a saturable absorber

We present a calculation of the chirp generated in laser pulses shorter than 100 fsec on propagation through a saturable absorber (DODCI in ethylene glycol). The calculation takes into account the absorber saturation and the solvent nonlinear refractive index. At pulse energies greater than 10 nJ the chirp tends to be predominantly positive, and it increases rapidly as the pulse duration becomes shorter than 50 fsec. At pulse energies in the 1–7-nJ range the chirp is mostly negative for pulses longer than 30 fsec.