Compression of high-power laser pulses using only multiple ultrathin plane plates

A proposal for additional temporal compression and peak power enhancement of intense (>TW/cm²) femtosecond laser pulses using two thin plane-parallel plates is presented. The first ultrathin plate (order of mm) induces spectral broadening due to self-phase modulation, and the second ultrathin plate (order of micron) corrects the spectral phase. The elimination of the negative dispersive multilayer coating from the scheme offers an improved laser-induced damage threshold for the post-compression process.