Advances in thin film coating has been critical in the further development of ultra-fast laser science. The very high damage threshold of thin-film coated dielectric optics has allowed the manipulation and transport of high energy and high power, ultra-intense laser pulses. In order to maintain the short pulse durations, the phase introduced by the multi-layer stacks needs to be carefully designed and then carefully manufactured. Characterization of these optics is essential to ensure design specs are met.
In this work, the Authors design and fabricate broadband laser mirrors to be used on petawatt class lasers. A KMLabs Chromatis dispersion measurement device is used to characterize the GDD of the mirrors, showing that GDD remains below 100fs^2 over the HR band, which is only a small deviation from the design parameters.