Linewidth-tunable laser diode array for rubidium laser pumping

Abstract

To optimise the pump source for a high-power diodepumped rubidium vapour laser, we have designed a laser diode array (LDA) with a narrowed and tunable linewidth and an external cavity formed by two volume Bragg gratings (VBGs). Through controlling the temperature differences between the two VBGs, the LDA linewidth, which was 1.8 nm before mounting the two VBGs, was tunable from 100 pm to 0.2 nm, while the output power changed by no more than 4 %. By changing simultaneously the temperature in both VBGs, the centre wavelength in air of the linewidth-tunable LDA was tunable from 779.40 nm to 780.05 nm.

A Linearly-Polarized Rubidium Vapor Laser Pumped by a Tunable Laser Diode Array with an External Cavity of a Temperature-Controlled Volume Bragg Grating

“…That is also the main reason that the efficiency we obtained is higher than Zheng et al [7] from Hamamastu Photonics K.K. In fact, further research by our team will be focused on a rubidium laser pumped by a linewidth-tunable LDA [16] to investigate how linewidth matching affects the efficiency.…”