Fig. 1. Schematic view of the multi-plate (MP) setup with two compression stages (FM, focusing mirror; CM, chirped mirror). For single-stage operation, the beam parameters are measured after the first pair of chirped mirrors CM1 and before the refocusing mirror FM2.

Fig. 2. Measured spectra of the pulse before the broadening, after the one-stage configuration and after the two-stage configuration.

Fig. 3. (a), (d) Measured and (b), (e) retrieved SHG-FROG traces for the output from the one-stage setup (upper panels) and the two-stage setup (lower panels); (c), (f) the reconstructed pulse from the FROG retrieval and the Fourier-transform-limited (FTL) pulse from the measured spectra.

Fig. 4. The beam profile of the compressed pulses after the two-stage configuration, just before final compression. The profile is collected by imaging a flat piece of paper in the beam, imaged onto a camera.

Fig. 5. (a), (b) Single-shot measurements of beam pointing along the horizontal () and vertical () directions and (c) pulse energy stability over 4 h for the compressed pulses after the two-stage configuration. The histograms of the stability distributions are plotted on the corresponding right-hand side panels.