A CO₂ laser has been FM chirp modulated by a CdTe intracavity modulator. A frequency deviation-of-100 MHz in 2 µs was attained in this fashion. Following heterodyne detection the chirped pulse was compressed to 15 ns using a surface acoustic wave compression filter. This corresponded to a compression factor of 130. The suppression of unwanted sidelobes with a weighting filter was demonstrated. We have explored the use of this technique for laser radar systems and described an electrooptically FM modulated CO₂ waveguide laser with postdetection pulse compression by a surface acoustic wave compressive filter. To our knowledge this is the first report of the successful operation of this important system.

© 1989 Optical Society of America

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