Patent ID: 8311069

Claim:
A method of using a laser system, the method comprising: (a) emitting at least one laser beam pulse; (b) introducing reference phases in the at least one pulse; (c) detecting harmonic frequency intensities of the at least one pulse; (d) determining a matrix of the detected harmonic frequency intensities versus the reference phases; (e) determining a maximum intensity in the matrix for each frequency of the at least one pulse; (f) assigning a value corresponding to each maximum intensity; (g) determining a second derivative of a spectral phase from the maximum intensity values for each frequency; (h) calculating a double integral with respect to frequency in order to obtain a spectral phase function of distortions in the at least one pulse; (i) canceling the distortion in the at least one pulse by introducing a negative value of that calculated in step (h); and (j) introducing the negative value to cancel distortion using a non-programmable optic including at least one of: (a) a deformable mirror, (b) a chirped mirror, and (c) a grating.