A method is developed for studying transient stimulated Raman scattering in the quasi-steady-state regime when the input pump field consists of a repetitive periodic sequence of pulses. The method is most attractive for cases where the single-pulse duration is substantially shorter than the repetition time scale, making a straightforward numerical simulation very costly, time consuming, and potentially intractable. The method is applicable to any periodic electric field envelope including that generated by a finite number of longitudinal modes with arbitrary phase. A second numerically efficient method is developed for treating the buildup of the entire pulse train. In addition, an analytic solution is found in the undepleted-pump regime which illuminates the underlying physics of the process.
A method is developed for studying transient stimulated Raman scattering in the quasi-steady-state regime when the input pump field consists of a repetitive periodic sequence of pulses. The method is most attractive for cases where the single-pulse duration is substantially shorter than the repetition time scale, making a straightforward numerical simulation very costly, time consuming, and potentially intractable. The method is applicable to any periodic electric field envelope including that generated by a finite number of longitudinal modes with arbitrary phase. A second numerically efficient method is developed for treating the buildup of the entire pulse train. In addition, an analytic solution is found in the undepleted-pump regime which illuminates the underlying physics of the process.
The high pulse repetition rates (~100 MHz) of radio-frequency free-electron lasers make possible the investigation of molecular response to a rapid pulse train.1 When the molecular decay time T2 is much larger than the time between pulses T, molecular memory is carried from pulse to pulse. For stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) the memory effect can lead to an increase in the size of the Raman dipole resulting in enhanced scattering. We analyze the 1-D SRS equations in the condition that the scattering under an individual pulse occurs in the transient regime (~10 ps). We obtain a general expression for the behavior of SRS which reduces to the following long-time limits: (1) When T2 ≪ T, the SRS from each pulse in the train develops independently from the others; (2) When T2 ≫ T, the transient SRS response is equivalent to the steady-state response to a constant pump at the time-averaged pump intensity. We also perform this analysis for a medium such as the atmosphere where the density of scatterers and Raman bandwidth decrease exponentially with distance.
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 consider transient stimulated Raman amplification of trains of picosecond pulses. In this regime the gain of a single pulse is reduced from its steady-state value because of the inability of the nonlinear polarization to follow the time variations of the pump pulse. In addition oscillatory behavior of the pump and Stokes pulse amplitudes have been predicted in the transient regime in conditions of high pump depletion. When the pump radiation is in the form of a train of pulses whose separation is comparable to or shorter than the dephasing time of the nonlinear medium, increased gain can be experienced by later pulses in the train because they can grow from the material polarization created by earlier pulses. We have analyzed this type of amplification as a function of pulse spacing, pump energy, and pump intensity in the regime of high pump depletion. In addition we have considered the effects of Stark shifts of the two-photon resonant Raman level on the Stokes conversion efficiency. We find that at constant pulse intensity the conversion efficiency increases with time through the pulse train, gradually approaching steady state at low conversion efficiencies at times long compared to T2. The maximum conversion efficiency increases as the pulse spacing is decreased. If the pump depletion is too high the peak conversion of the Stokes oscillates through the train in a manner similar to the oscillations of the intensity of a single pulse. A Stark shift of the resonant level can cause reduced gain as well as introduce phase shifts on the Stokes and pump beams. The effects of these processes on the conversion efficiency are discussed.
A general theory of transient stimulated Raman scattering and the phase-matching diagrams are developed based on an interaction Hamiltonian which includes all the possible competing interaction channels. In a Raman system pumped by multiple crossing beams with multiple Stokes and anti-Stokes components, these channels are defined by the interactions among fields at different frequencies and/or k vectors of the pump pairs and Stokes and anti-Stokes fields. An ensemble-averaged equation of motion for the active phonon mode is derived within the Markovian approximation in which the phonon-phonon coupling (pressure effect) is reduced to an energy relaxation and a phase fluctuation. A complete set of transient coupled equations including phase modulation, Stark shift, medium (anharmonic) saturation, and all the possible four-wave-mixing channels is presented. In the transient regime, it is found that the effects of the Stark shift on the Raman efficiency are mainly governed by the input pump energy in contrast to the steady-state theory where the pump intensity plays the main role. Both analytic and numerical methods are developed in describing the nonlinear effects due to the energy feedback mechanism in the strong pump-depletion regime. Twelve possible four-wave-mixing channels are analyzed for nonlinear phase diagrams characterized by the angles among pump pairs, and Stokes and anti-Stokes fields. Finally, numerical examples are shown for the effects of the coherence lengths of high-order Stokes fields and pump pairs on the generation of low-order Stokes fields.
Stimulated Raman scattering is considered in the transient limit where the pulse width is small compared with T2. In the case where diffraction, level saturation, anti-Stokes and higher-order Stokes radiation, and quantum noise can all be neglected, we show that there are three distinct evolution regimes: the I regime, where the Stokes pulse is small compared with the pump pulse; the transition regime, where the Stokes and pump pulses are comparable; and the J regime, where the pump pulse is small compared with the Stokes pulse. The characteristic behavior in each of these three regimes is explored by using a combination of analytical and numerical tools.
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.