The theory of transient stimulated Raman scattering has been extended to include an arbitrary shape of the laser pump pulse. It is shown that the maximum Stokes gain depends on the total energy content per unit area of the pump pulse, and not on the instanteous intensity for an exciting pulse of short duration. The Stokes pulse has a leading edge which rises sharply to a maximum, where the maximum occurs with some delay with respect to the maximum of the pump pulse. The trailing edge follows the decay of the pump. In a nondispersive medium, the gain is not reduced by frequency broadening of the laser output, while in a dispersive medium, considerable gain reduction is expected. Numerical results for various laser-pulse shapes and spectral distributions are presented.

• Received 16 January 1970

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.2.60