  We report on a simple method to prepare optical pulses with exponentially
rising envelope on the time scale of a few ns. The scheme is based on the
exponential transfer function of a fast transistor, which generates an
exponentially rising envelope that is transferred first on a radio frequency
carrier, and then on a coherent cw laser beam with an electro-optical phase
modulator (EOM). The temporally shaped sideband is then extracted with an
optical resonator and can be used to efficiently excite a single Rb-87 atom.
