Diode-pumped rubidium vapor laser

By incorporating a commercial diode-laser-bar into a volume Bragg grating(VBG) based external cavity, we obtained 80 W CW output power with 0.1 nm linewidth centered at 780.2 nm. To reduce the thermal effect, a chopper was used to convert the CW pump light into pulsed mode, with pulse duration of 440 μs and duty ratio of 1∶5. The 5 mm long gain medium was filled with metallic Rb and buffer gases of 33 kPa ethane and 47 kPa helium at room temperature. At peak pump power of 35.4 W and gain medium temperature of 120 ℃, we obtained 600 mW peak power output of the 795 nm Rb laser with slope efficiency of 1.7%.