Several designs exist for external cavity tunable diode lasers used in atom trapping experiments.
Our aim was to combine the best aspects of previous designs but make improvements that would enable students to align and adjust the lasers more conveniently. Our lasers have been utilized in dual-species MOT experiments involving Rubidium and Cesium. We present construction details for several configurations, and show data evaluating their relative performance. This graph shows the chip modes for a typical Sharp LTO24 780nm laser diode. This spectum was obtained with no external cavity and the laser running at a current just below threshold.