title: Enhancement of filamentation postcompression by astigmatic focusing.
abstract: The energy scaling up of pulse postcompression is still an open issue. In this work we analyze the use of astigmatic focusing to improve the output pulses in a filamentation based postcompression setup. Unlike spherical conditions, astigmatic focusing enhances the output energy and the spectral broadening of the filament. This is due to the increase of critical power, allowing a considerable improvement of the postcompression energy and stability in a simple way. We demonstrated compression from FWHM 100 fs, 10 nm, 3 mJ input pulses to 13 fs, 142 nm, near 1 mJ pulses.
authors.affiliation: Grupo de Investigación en Óptica Extrema (GIOE), Universidad de Salamanca, Pl. Merced s/n, Salamanca E-37008, Spain. b.alonso@usal.es
authors.forename: Benjamín
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Alonso
authors.forename: Rocío
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Borrego-Varillas
authors.forename: Íñigo J
authors.initials: ÍJ
authors.lastname: Sola
authors.forename: Óscar
authors.initials: Ó
authors.lastname: Varela
authors.forename: Ayalid
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Villamarín
authors.forename: M Victoria
authors.initials: MV
authors.lastname: Collados
authors.forename: Julio San
authors.initials: JS
authors.lastname: Román
authors.forename: Juan M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Bueno
authors.forename: Luis
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Roso