Using a technique similar to chirped pulse compression, we have compressed the 50-mW cw output of a diode laser into pulses of greater than 500-mW peak power and less than 400-ps duration. By applying a small current modulation to the diode, we induced a small wavelength modulation in the vicinity of the 6s_1/2-to-6p_3/2 cesium resonance transition at 852 nm. Group-velocity dispersion on propagation through a cesium vapor cell then led to pulse compression. We developed a simple model to make predictions of output pulse shapes by using different modulation waveforms.

© 1993 Optical Society of America

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