Study of the competition between forward and backward stimulated Raman scattering in methane

Simultaneous forward and backward stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) in methane pumped by a single longitudinal mode Nd:YAG laser at 355 nm has been investigated both experimentally and numerically. For forward SRS, a maximum energy-conversion efficiency of 55% was obtained under 24 atm, while for backward SRS the corresponding figure was 58% under 4.7 atm. Under low pressures or at low pump energies, the conversion efficiency for backward SRS was found to be much higher than that for forward SRS, while the situation is quite the contrary under high pressures and at high pump energies. A quasi-two-dimensional numerical model is introduced to elucidate the competition between forward and backward SRS; we conclude that the high-pressure and high-pump-energy experimental results should be caused by the thermal defocusing effect in the SRS process. This is confirmed by the experimental fact that a decrease of the pulse-repetition rate increases the conversion efficiency for backward SRS but decreases that for forward SRS under high pressures. Our calculated results are in good agreement with the experimental results at a pulse-repetition rate of 2 Hz. PACS 42.55.Ye; 42.65.Dr; 42.65.Es