Pulse operation of linearly polarized diode-pumped cesium-vapor laser based on acousto-optical modulation.

We present a pulse linearly polarized diode-pumped cesium-vapor laser (Cs-DPAL) based on an acousto-optical modulator (AOM) for the first time. The continuous wave (CW) performance of the Cs-DPAL was first investigated, and ~1.05 W linearly polarized CW laser was obtained. Next, we applied a rectangular signal to modulate the AOM. The Cs-DPAL realized a pulse laser output with a maximum repetition rate of 1 MHz and minimum pulse duration of 238 ns. To the best of our knowledge, this is the highest repetition rate reported thus far for a diode-pumped alkali-vapor laser (DPAL). The maximum output power of the pulse laser reached ~0.20 W, and the corresponding M and M factors were 1.31 and 1.19, respectively. Finally, we realized code modulation of the Cs-DPAL, with a maximum bit rate of 2 Mb/s.