Compact, Turnable Diode Laser for Water-Vapor Spectroscopy

Stable tunable diode lasers suitable for industrial environments are cost prohibitive. Lower-cost systems suffer from unstable wavelength behavior and mode hopping requiring operation by highly-trained personnel. The development of low cost, compact and robust tunable diode lasers is required for the transition of diode-laser spectroscopy from the laboratory to the marketplace. We will develop a compact, external-cavity stabilization system which will employ independent control over the cavity optical path length and a wavelength-selective element. The system will quasi-continuously tune over the entire laser diode gain profile in 10 nm-20 nm continuous tuning intervals. The final package for a Phase 2 prototype could be the size of a deck of cards. In Phase 1 we will assemble a demonstration system on an optical breadboard. In Phase 2 a fully integrated device will be developed with a tuning range centered at 1380 nm for water-vapor spectroscopy.