Group velocity dispersion using commercial optical design programs

Summary form only given. Most analyses of the group velocity dispersion (GVD) of the ultrafast geometries used in pulse compressors and shapers rely on analytical calculations of various segments of the system, e.g. grating pairs, prism pairs, fibers, etc. We used three different optical design programs, CODE V/spl trade/ 9.0, OSLO/spl trade/ Pro 6.1 and ZEMAX/spl trade/-EE 10.0 to find the GVD in three familiar geometries: a fused silica slab, a double grating pair pulse compressor, and a double prism pair pulse compressor. For each program we constructed a short macro that calculated the GVD from the optical path values derived from the specific geometry. Although the individual macros reflected the idiosyncrasies of their programs, all of them gave the same results. The values computed by these programs were in excellent agreement with evaluations of the appropriate equation and with literature values.