Abstract

In our studies of soliton formation in stimulated Raman scattering (SRS), we have discovered that a fully quantum mechanical theory predicts large shot-to-shot fluctuations in the SRS power spectrum, which leads to soliton decay. This theory, which includes a Langevin operator to simulate collision-induced fluctuations and maintain operator consistency, can be used to generate the statistics of the macroscopic SRS output. We have also studied a simpler model which uses a random vacuum field as an input to the semiclassical SRS equations. The vacuum field was numerically generated by summing a set of electromagnetic field modes that spanned the collisional Raman linewidth. Each mode was separated in frequency by less than the resolution of the system and given a random phase for each shot. Despite the lack of Langevin terms, the shot-to-shot variations and two-frequency correlation function from the simple approach were essentially indistinguishable from the fully quantum mechanical theory. This suggests that a simulation of SRS from spontaneous emission does not always require Langevin terms in the quantum noise.

© 1988 Optical Society of America