Abstract

We address the problem of pumping Stokes radiation by broadband incoherent laser beams in contrast to aberrated beams. While for aberrated beams the transversal phase variations in any given plane of reference are constant in time, they will fluctuate in time for incoherent beams. As is well known for Raman scattering by broadband lasers, the frequency mode structure of the amplified Stokes beam will be modified by the pump laser, leading to an increase in temporal correlation between pump and Stokes. For collinear pumping by an incoherent pump this implies that the amplified Stokes beam will also be incoherent, even if seeded initially with a coherent beam. For transversal pumping geometries Stokes beam coherence will be affected by the reduced temporal correlation between the pump fields at different transversal locations. In the case of resonant scattering (linewidth much smaller than mode spacing), we show that the transversal Stokes coherence length is limited by the longitudinal coherence length of the pump. In addition, a reduction in gain occurs. We present analytical and numerical results which indicate corresponding limitations for intermediate scattering (linewidth comparable to mode spacing), which is the case of practical interest in gases.

© 1985 Optical Society of America