Patent ID: 8023538

Claim:
A pulsed light source utilizing optical parametric amplification in a nonlinear crystal, the pulsed light source comprising: a seed oscillator producing broad bandwidth optical pulses; a signal arm receiving optical pulses from the oscillator and comprising at least one signal conditioning stage to produce a signal conditioned output at a signal wavelength; a pump arm receiving optical pulses from the oscillator and comprising at least one pump conditioning stage and a quantum amplifier configured to produce a pump conditioned output at a pump wavelength, said quantum amplifier comprising a cryogenically cooled solid-state amplifier, said pump arm further comprising a pulse stretching stage disposed upstream of said quantum amplifier and a pulse compression stage disposed downstream of said quantum amplifier; and a parametric amplifier comprising a nonlinear crystal, said parametric amplifier receiving said signal conditioned output from said signal arm and said pump conditioned output from said pump arm, said signal conditioned output and said pump conditioned output configured to overlap in both time and space in said nonlinear crystal, said parametric amplifier producing amplified output at said signal wavelength.