Temporal compression of cw diode-laser output into short pulses with cesium-vapor group-velocity dispersion

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.