System and method for high-intensity ultrashort pulse compression

1. A system, comprising:

a laser emitting an ultrashort pulse beam; and

a dielectric bulk medium having a refractive index depending on intensity, said bulk medium broadening the laser beam homogeneously;

wherein said bulk medium has a varying thickness such that a product of a thickness of the bulk medium by the laser beam intensity is constant across the beam.

2. The system of claim 1 , wherein said bulk medium is selected to be transparent to propagated and generated wavelengths.

3. The system of claim 1 , further comprising a conjugated optics collimating the laser beam after its propagation through the bulk medium.

4. The system of claim 3 , further comprising chirped mirrors to compress the broadened spectrum to a shorter pulse.

5. The system of claim 3 , further comprising a medium delaying longer wavelengths of the broadened spectrum.

6. The system of claim 1 , installed inside a vacuum chamber.

7. The system of claim 1 , kept in an inert gas environment.

8. The system of claim 1 , wherein said laser is one of: a terawatt and above femto second laser.

9. A system, comprising:

a laser emitting an ultrashort pulse beam; and

a dielectric bulk medium having a refractive index depending on intensity, said bulk medium broadening the laser beam homogeneously;

wherein the beam of said laser has a Gaussian profile and said bulk medium is a lens having a varying thickness selected so that it has, at a radial position corresponding to 1/e of the beam energy, a thickness e times higher than a thickness at a central part of the lens, e being the Euler's number.

10. The system of claim 9 , further comprising an off-axis parabola placed after said lens.