Abstract

We have evaluated the suitability of two commercial external-cavity, tunable diode lasers (tuning range approximately 770-800 nm) for use as Raman excitation sources. The tests consisted of relatively long-term (up to 14 h) measurements of wavelength and power stability as well as measurements of reproducibility of emission wavelength during repeated on/off cycling. We find that, for both tested lasers, the external cavity configuration either eliminates or dampens "mode-hopping" and wavelength drift to a level suitable for obtaining good-quality Raman spectra in most routine experiments. Over the course of several hours, wavelength change from both mode-hopping and drift is less than approximately 0.05 nm for the New-Focus laser and 0.07 nm for the SDL laser. Reproducibility over several on/off cycles is of the same order of magnitude. In all cases, resolution measurements were limited by the spectrographs.

Actively controlled tuning of an external cavity diode laser by polarization spectroscopy

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Widely tunable continuous-wave Raman laser in diatomic hydrogen pumped by an external-cavity diode laser

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Mode-locked Raman laser in H₂ pumped by a mode-locked external-cavity diode laser

Yihan Xiong, Sytil Murphy, Paul Nachman, Kevin S. Repasky, and J. L. Carlsten
J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 24(11) 2893-2898 (2007)