Abstract

By use of a streak camera, the temporal variations of light pulses generated by stimulated Raman scattering have been observed when the pulse duration is of the order of the inverse Raman linewidth. In this regime, which is intermediate between transient and steady state, the pulse shapes undergo large shot-to-shot variations due to the effects of quantum moise. It is found that some of the pulses bear a strong resemblance to the temporal coherence modes, i.e., the eigenfunctions of the two-time field autocorrelation function.¹ Probability distributions for the energy content of each of these modes are negative-exponential functions of energy. This explains why isolated modes are sometimes seen on a single shot.

© 1988 Optical Society of America