Fig. 1. Experimental setup for self-diffraction signal generation and temporal contrast measurement. BS: beam splitter; M1–M6: reflective mirrors; CL1, CL2: plane-convex cylindrical lenses,  mm; P1: 0.15 mm thick fused silica plate; A: aperture; CM1: cylindrical reflective mirror,  mm; C1: spherical concave reflective mirror,  mm; C2: spherical convex reflective mirror,  mm; VND: 2 mm thick variable neutral-density filter; P2: 1 mm thick fused silica plate; correlator: third-order cross-correlator (Amplitude Technologies Inc., Sequia 800).

Fig. 2. The temporal contrast of the input pulse and the generated first-order SD signal. The inset is an enlarged part of the curves from  ps to 3 ps.

Fig. 3. Scheme of angular dispersion generation.

Fig. 4. (a) The spectra of the incident pulse and the first-order SD signal ; (b) the spectra at 30 different positions, the inset shows the center wavelengths measured at each position.

Fig. 5. Scheme of angular dispersion compensation.

Fig. 6. (a) Scheme of prism dispersion; (b) the relationship between the incident angle and the dispersion angle of pulses with  nm and  nm; (c) spectra of compensated SD signal.