A QUARTER CENTURY OF STIMULATED RAMAN SCATTERING

Abstract

To round out a quarter century of SRS the timing of this writing (1986) requires a look ahead of only one year into the future. The proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Raman Spectroscopy present a picture of current activity. Further progress will be made in time-resolved spectroscopy with subpicosecond resolution, in the study of hyper-Raman and other higher order effects with CARS, in extension of resonant Raman excitation in the UV region of spectrum, and in the development of Raman laser sources. During past few years extensive theoretical investigations have been made for four-wave light mixing in the case of one or more very strong light beams. The perturbation approach for those fields ceases to be valid. If only one light field is strong, the usual approach is to make a transformation to a rotating coordinate system so that the strong Hamiltonian for this light field becomes time-independent. Very recently these techniques have been extended to the case of two or more strong fields. CARS-type experiments with strong beams are likely to receive more attention. Extrapolation of the current activities instills confidence in the vitality of stimulated Raman scattering for the foreseeable future.