Characteristics of the single-longitudinal-mode planar-waveguide external cavity diode laser at 1064 nm.

We describe the characteristics of the planar-waveguide external cavity diode laser (PW-ECL). To the best of our knowledge, it is the first butterfly-packaged 1064 nm semiconductor laser that is stable enough to be locked to an external frequency reference. We evaluated its performance from the viewpoint of precision experiments. Using a hyperfine absorption line of iodine, we suppressed its frequency noise by a factor of up to 10(4) at 10 mHz. The PW-ECL's compactness and low cost make it a candidate to replace traditional Nd:YAG nonplanar ring oscillators and fiber lasers in applications that require a single longitudinal mode.