Transverse and phase effects are shown to alter the spontaneous emergence of off‐resonant Stimulated Raman Scattering (SRS) bright Raman pump and dark Stokes solitons from quantum fluctuations in a single‐pass cell.
Manifestations of quantum fluctuations in stimulated Raman scattering ( SRS ) have been intensively studied lately1. Quantum noise present in spontaneous scattering stimulates fluctuations both in phase and in amplitude characteristics of output Stokes emission. At present statistical properties of amplitude fluctuations are studied in detail and it is shown that in linear transient regime of SRS without pump depletion statistical scatter of Stokes energy Es has negative exponential distribution2. In saturation regime of SRS the amplitude fluctuations are almost suppressed simultaneously with pump depletion. The phase fluctuations manifest both in linear and in nonlinear SRS and produce beam pointing fluctuations3, a change in Stokes emission spectra from pulse to pulse4 and cause soliton appearance in Rayleigh component of SRS5. Phase noise is observed in saturation regime due to relation between phases of Stokes and phonon waves which is preserved in processes of stationary and quasistationary SRS amplification. Spectrum phase fluctuations manifest as fine structure of SRS spectrum4, fluctuations of average Stokes frequency and Stokes linewidth fluctuations. The evolution of phase fluctuations in time is determined by the nature of spontaneous scattering and polarization of Raman media and is of great interest as one can follow its development from vacuum modes level to saturation regime. However up to now this problem has not been studied yet.
Experimental studies of spatial and temporal coherence of SRS in hydrogen [1] have pointed out the need of a quantum theory in the nonlinear regime. Previous studies have dealt either with diffraction in a linearized regime [2] or with a nonlinear light‐matter description in the uniform‐plane‐wave regime [3]. Both diffraction and nonlinear effects are examined herein. The Stokes pulse builds up from quantum initiation as does the superfluorescence SF emission [4]. The interplay of diffraction coupling, transverse variations of the atomic density and quantum fluctuations on the Stokes buildup was simulated using a self‐consistant numerical algorithm [5] previously developed for finite beam effects in Self‐Induced‐Transparency [6,7].
Stimulated Raman scattering is a quantum macroscopic process starting from unstable state. Any fluctuations, initial or boundary, classical or quantum in nature, lead to the macroscopic output fluctuations of the Stokes amplitude. Manifestation of these fluctuations in the statistics of the Stokes pulse energy and its spectrum have been studied extensively for the linear stage of the SRS [1]. Another fluctuation phenomena arises in nonlinear stage of the SRS - the random spikes, usually called soliton-like, are observed in the depleted pump [2]. Here we shown that the reason for these soliton-like spikes is the conservation of the relative phase Δϕ=ϕL−ϕS+ϕQ of the laser, Stokes and the polarization wanes [3].