A broadband Soleil-Babinet compensator for ultrashort light pulses

This letter reports a novel design for a broadband Soleil-Babinet compensator including two pairs of optical wedges plus one plate. According to our birefringent dispersion compensation model, we can eliminate the first-order birefringent phase retardation (BPR) dispersion by using three different birefringent crystals. Our results show a Soleil-Babinet compensator based on a MgF2/ADP/KDP combination can work from 0 degrees to 360 degrees phase compensation with the maximal residual BPR less than 6 degrees within the spectral region from 0.65 to 0.95 mu m. The residual BPR of the compensator increases monotonically with the spectral deviation from the designed central wavelength, so our compensator is very suitable to be used for broadband laser pulses with most of their energies around the central wavelengths.