Abstract

At the present time, substantial progress has been made in generating intense light pulses with durations of a few femtoseconds. Experimental results on propagation of such pulses through a Raman-active medium (particularly through optical fibers) suggest that the process of stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) of femtosecond pulses differs qualitatively from SRS of quasicontinuous waves. The spectrum of a femtosecond pulse with duration τ_p < Ω⁻¹ (Ω = (E₂ – E₁)/h being the frequency difference between the levels participating in SRS contains initially an infinite set of frequency components which satisfy the condition for a Raman resonance, and the question of the dynamics of the pulse in this situation is impossible to resolve by quasi-monochromatic wave analysis.

© 1993 Optical Society of America