Alignment of chirped-pulse compressor

An original method of alignment of grating compressors for ultrahigh-power CPA laser systems is proposed. The use of this method for adjustment of the grating compressor of a PEARL subpetawatt laser complex made it possible to align the diffraction gratings with a second accuracy in all three angular degrees of freedom, including alignment of the grooves, and to adjust the angles of beam incidence on the grating with a high accuracy. A simple method for measuring the difference in the groove densities of gratings with accuracy better than 0.005 lines mm^-1 is proposed and tested.