
Pulse Compression 437
components are in phase after passage through the ideal compressor, the temporal
shape is that with the highest peak power, corresponding to the particular pulse
spectrum.
For some applications, it may be more important to achieve a smooth, narrow
temporal profile, rather than a maximum peak intensity. In this section we shall
focus mostly on simple and practical devices, such as quadratic compressors.
The drawback of using bulk materials as a nonlinear medium is the strong
nonlinear behavior of the frequency modulation and the poor pulse quality after
compression. Moreover, as discussed in Chapters 3 and 5, SPM is associated
with ...