Design Blueprint: A Diode-Pumped Rubidium Alkali Laser Sized by Pump Absorption and Quantum Defect

Design blueprint derived from the source paper (DOI 10.5281/zenodo.24155182): This paper presents a computed design for a diode-pumped alkali laser (DPAL) using rubidium vapour buffered with ethane in a centimetre-scale cell. The sizing follows from applying the relevant intensity, thermal, nonlinear and geometric bounds at a single stated operating point, with every number produced by a deposited computation. The headline result is an absorbed pump of 460 W from 500 W incident, a quantum defect of only 1.9% (quantum-limit efficiency 98.1%), an output of 331 W at the stated slope efficiency, and just 27 W deposited as heat in the vapour. The binding constraint is identi Status: DESIGN BLUEPRINT — SIMULATED, NOT MEASURED — NOT BUILT. All numbers are simulated values from the source paper's computation, deposited with this blueprint as compute.py and results.json. AI-use disclosure: Dave, an AI research system, assisted with the computation and drafting under the author's direction; author of record William Alexander Aldred.