Physical Review A
Nonlinear theory of transient stimulated Raman scattering and its application to long-pulse experiments
C. Claude, F. Ginovart, Jérôme J.-P. Leon
Abstract
The nonlinear theory of stimulated Raman scattering of high-energy long laser pulses in two-level media is constructed and provides a unified global interpretation of the experiments of Dr\"uhl, Wenzel, and Carlsten [Phys. Rev. Lett. 51, 1171 (1983)]. It is proved that the model, resulting from the slowly varying envelope approximation and including phase mismatch and detuning from Raman resonance, is integrable by the spectral transform method for arbitrary boundary values. The essential variable in the theory is the phase of the Stokes pulse relative to the pump. For long duration input pump pulses and when pump and Stokes pulses experience a rapid \ensuremath{\pi} phase shift, an anomalous spike of pump radiation is created in the pump depletion zone. It is shown in particular that the decay of Raman spikes is related to the velocity of this \ensuremath{\pi} phase shift. For fast flips, the possibility of observing spike overflow is established and, with multiple phase flips, a multiple-spike phenomenon is produced, suggesting new experiments. Lastly, the number of optical phonons participating to the interaction is explicitly calculated.