Accumulation of Raman gain between closely spaced pulse pairs

The short-pulse conversion efficiency of stimulated Raman scattering in Pb vapor is increased from 15% to 35% by using a novel technique that employs a closely spaced pair of pump pulses. The second pulse scatters off the coherent excitation induced in the medium by the first pulse, with a resultant enhancement in efficiency. To our knowledge these results give the first observation of such long-lived cooperative phenomena in stimulated Raman scattering. We have also observed this phenomenon in H2 and show that this technique is readily applicable to other Raman-active media.