Patent ID: 7711013

Claim:
A pulsed laser system, comprising: a signal source; a stretcher temporally stretching an output of said source; a fiber amplifier; a compressor recompressing an output of said amplifier; an AOM selecting output pulses from said amplifier; wherein each of said signal source, said stretcher, said fiber amplifier, said AOM and said compressor comprise a pre-tested module, and said system is configured with at least said signal source, said stretcher, said fiber amplifier and said AOM optically connected via fiber splices; at least one tap unit within or between ones of said modules, including means for picking off a portion of said signal for measurement of a spectrum within or between said modules; at least one spectral filter, said at least one spectral filter being disposed external to said signal source and said fiber amplifier, and either before or after said stretcher, said filter having a wavelength sensitive characteristic that modifies a spectral shape of an output from said signal source and narrows the spectrum of the signal source output, wherein at least one of said tap units is located downstream of said filter and configured to enable measurement of said narrowed spectrum, and wherein said filter is disposed before said stretcher, and an attenuator module disposed between said signal source and said stretcher, said attenuator controlling an amplitude of a pulse emitted from said source so as to prevent non-linear effects within said stretcher from altering the pulse spectrum.