A theory for selective-vibrational-dephasing experiments using transient stimulated Raman scattering in high laser depletion is presented. The transient stimulated Raman scattering equations are numerically solved including laser depletion for homogeneously and inhomogeneously broadened vibrational line shapes. A detailed account of the effects of low and high laser depletion on the vibrational amplitudes is given. An interpretation for excite-and-probe vibrational-dephasing experiments undertaken in the low- and high-laser-depletion regimes is developed. For a collinear laser probe pulse, high depletion of the excitation laser pulse leads to enhanced coherent Stokes probe scattering from one vibrational subgroup in the inhomogeneously broadened line shape. This selective scattering is greatly dependent upon the excitation laser pulse width and the off-resonance frequency of the vibrational subgroup. The enhanced selectivity in high laser depletion allows the homogeneous dephasing time ${T}_{2}$ to be measured to a high level of accuracy.
A theory for selective-vibrational-dephasing experiments using transient stimulated Raman scattering in high laser depletion is presented. The transient stimulated Raman scattering equations are numerically solved including laser depletion for homogeneously and inhomogeneously broadened vibrational line shapes. A detailed account of the effects of low and high laser depletion on the vibrational amplitudes is given. An interpretation for excite-and-probe vibrational-dephasing experiments undertaken in the low- and high-laser-depletion regimes is developed. For a collinear laser probe pulse, high depletion of the excitation laser pulse leads to enhanced coherent Stokes probe scattering from one vibrational subgroup in the inhomogeneously broadened line shape. This selective scattering is greatly dependent upon the excitation laser pulse width and the off-resonance frequency of the vibrational subgroup. The enhanced selectivity in high laser depletion allows the homogeneous dephasing time T2 to be measured to a high level of accuracy.
The microscopic information content of coherent transient Raman measurements is analyzed. It is shown that for short pulses and optically thin samples the Kaiser–Laubereau pulse sequence is the Raman analog of the optical free induction decay, and that the experimental observable contains the same dynamical information as the isotropic, spontaneous Raman line shape. Under these conditions, the experiment therefore cannot be used to selectively measure the homogeneous dephasing time of a system with an inhomogeneously broadened line. The results of our analysis are at variance with the earlier results of Kaiser and Laubereau and the more recent predictions of Oxtoby. However, these experiments, under certain circumstances, may be used to obtain a nonselective line narrowing, as found by Zinth, Polland, Laubereau, and Kaiser. We also consider the situation in which the sample is optically dense, in which case laser depletion must be taken into account. The distinction between saturation of the vibrational transition and depletion of the pump pulse is discussed, and selectivity is shown to arise from the former phenomenon, rather than from the latter. This result is at variance with the predictions of George and Harris. An alternative pulse sequence, the Raman echo, is suggested as a tool to achieve selectivity. A unified theory of the Raman echo is developed, which is valid for a bath with arbitrary time scale and which interpolates between the limits of homogeneous and inhomogeneous line broadening.
The results of numerical calculations of the transient stimulated Raman scattering reported previously have been verified experimentally under conditions where both linear dispersion and self-focusing effects were negligible. The existence of a delay between maxima of the laser and Stokes pulses is experimentally demonstrated for the first time, while the pulse shortening in time via Raman scattering is established more firmly than in previous work. The incident-laser-pulse duration, generated-Stokes-pulse duration, and delay between intensity maxima for the laser and Stokes pulses were measured with the two-photon absorption-fluorescence technique. The effective phonon-dephasing time is determined via spontaneous Raman scattering. By using these measured quantities, inferences are made as to the magnitude of the transient gain and the shape of the exciting picosecond laser pulse.
A new method to measure picosecond or subpicosecond vibrational-dephasing dynamics with the use of incoherent or broadband light is presented theoretically and experimentally. It is based on a transient coherent Raman process with three beams. In our experimental scheme, two of them are incoherent light from a single source, and a delay time between the two is variable. A third beam has a higher frequency than the incoherent light by a vibrational energy in a molecule of interest, and is coherent in the delay-time range of the measurement. The delay-time dependence of coherent Stokes Raman scattering (CSRS) intensity offers the information about the coherence dynamics of the vibrational transition with a resolution time determined only by the correlation time of the incoherent light. For the theoretical calculation, a three-level model of the molecular system with homogeneous broadening is used, and delay-time dependences of the CSRS signal are calculated for off-resonance and resonance cases. Dephasing dynamics of the 2915-${\mathrm{cm}}^{\mathrm{\ensuremath{-}}1}$ mode in dimethylsulfoxide was observed experimentally by the new method with the use of nanosecond laser pulses, and the result agrees well with that obtained with picosecond pulses.
Parametric instability induced by the medium saturation in stimulated Raman scattering is investigated theoretically via a generalized detuning (1) where ω p,s,o are the frequency of the pump, Stokes, and phonon, ϕ ˙ p s is the phase modulation, and the last term is the nonlinear correction of the highly excited anharmonic molecule with an amplitude Q.The steady-state gain and hence the Stokes efficiency, in the presence of the anharmonic term, are governed by a cubic equation of |Q|2which is to be solved from the Bloch and Maxwell equations including the pump depletion. Numerical results are shown for the transition diagram of Stokes efficiency vs input pump intensity at various system conditions at the steady-state. For the transient regime, with pulse duration shorter than the dephasing time, we analyze the temporal profiles of the Stokes and the depleted pump based on a transformed equation which combines Bloch and Maxwell equation as follows: (2) where Tis a nonlinear time, G s is the steady-state gain, l0is the input pump intensity, and Uis the real part of the phonon amplitude Q.For an input pulse intensity given by sech2(t/t p ), Eq. (2) is solved numerically to study the transient pulse profiles in the presence of pump depletion and medium saturation.
We have investigated the behavior of high-order stimulated Raman scattering in a highly-transient regime. We demonstrate efficient collinear generation of vibrational sidebands in molecular hydrogen and methane using two-color pumping with pulses of duration $\ensuremath{\tau}\ensuremath{\sim}100\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\mathrm{fs}$ tuned to a vibrational Raman transition. A Raman spectrum with a large bandwidth was observed, ranging from the IR to the UV. Under some conditions strong pump depletion was observed and up to five anti-Stokes sidebands were observed to have energies exceeding 10% of the transmitted pump pulse energies. A numerical simulation reproduces qualitatively and quantitatively the experimental results and allows us to explain key experimental features. The simulation also confirms that the molecular coherence in the medium is substantially increased by the two-color pumping and allows us to deduce values for the degree of material excitation. The use of this technique looks promising for efficient subfemtosecond pulse generation.
The theory of transient stimulated Raman scattering has been extended to include an arbitrary shape of the laser pump pulse. It is shown that the maximum Stokes gain depends on the total energy content per unit area of the pump pulse, and not on the instanteous intensity for an exciting pulse of short duration. The Stokes pulse has a leading edge which rises sharply to a maximum, where the maximum occurs with some delay with respect to the maximum of the pump pulse. The trailing edge follows the decay of the pump. In a nondispersive medium, the gain is not reduced by frequency broadening of the laser output, while in a dispersive medium, considerable gain reduction is expected. Numerical results for various laser-pulse shapes and spectral distributions are presented.