Offner stretcher aberrations revisited to compensate material dispersion

We present simple analytical formulae for the calculation of the spectral phase and residual angular dispersion of an ultrashort pulse propagating through the Offner stretcher. Based on these formulae, we show that the radii of curvature of both convex and concave mirrors in the Offner triplet can be adapted to tune the fourth order dispersion term of the spectral phase of the pulse. As an example, a single-grating Offner stretcher design suitable for the suppression of material dispersion in the Ti:Sa PALS laser system is proposed. The results obtained by numerical raytracing well match those calculated from the analytical formulae. (C) 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.