External-cavity diode laser using a grazing-incidence diffraction grating.
An external cavity has been developed for use with commercial diode lasers. It uses a diffraction grating at grazing incidence for wavelength selection and output coupling. This configuration allows a GaAlAs diode laser to be tuned conveniently anywhere in a range greater than 20 nm. Also, the linewidth is reduced by a factor of more than 1000 from 40 MHz to less than 10 kHz. The new laser system should be useful for high-resolution spectroscopy, laser cooling of atoms, time standards, and coherent optical communications.
Harvey
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KC
Myatt
C J
CJ