  The countless applications of ultrashort laser pulses in very different
scientific areas explain the ongoing efforts to develop new strategies for the
generation of light pulses with increasingly better characteristics. In this
work, we theoretically study the application of the nonlinear reverse
propagation method to produce few-cycle pulses with clean temporal profiles
from standard post-compression setups based in hollow capillary fibers. By
numerically solving the propagation of a desired goal pulse in the backward
direction, we are able to predict the structure of the ideal input pulse that
could be perfectly compressed in a given setup. Although the goal pulse cannot
be chosen in a simple manner due to the fundamental symmetries of the nonlinear
propagation equation, our analysis shows that the ideal pulse presents a
recurring form and that, in general, both its intensity profile and phase must
be shaped to recover the optimized goal output.
