Diode-pumped 10 W continuous wave cesium laser.

An efficient cesium vapor laser pumped with a continuous wave laser diode array has been demonstrated. The linewidth of the pump source was narrowed using the external cavity to match it to the cesium absorption line. The output power of the continuous wave cesium laser was 10 W, which exceeds previous results by more than a factor of 10, and the slope efficiency was 68%. The overall optical efficiency was 62%, which is a factor of 6 higher than previous pulsed laser results for alkali lasers with diode laser array pumping.