Switching of Raman scattering

In transient stimulated Raman scattering (SRS), efficient conversion of short pump pulses to Stokes radiation is difficult to obtain. A short seed pulse at the Stokes frequency increases the efficiency and may induce full depletion of the pump pulse, even when the pump power is too low to scatter efficiency without seed. However, for low pump powers the Ra­man polarizability induced by the pump and seed pulse decays, which results in a terminating Stokes pulse, even when the pump pulse itself is long. Nevertheless, the Stokes pulse can be wider than the dephasing time of the Raman polarizability or the width of the seed pulse by an order of magnitude. Applying a second seed may once again induce a sufficiently large Raman polarizability but only if the phase of the Stokes seed matches the phase difference between the pump and remaining Raman polarizability. If not, the polarizability induced by the first pulse and consequently the conversion efficiency for the Stokes radiation decreases. Therefore, it is possible to switch off the Stokes pulse by applying a second seed with appropriate phase and intensity.