Prospects of high power lasers using stimulated scattering

Work performed on increasing the specific energy, fluence, intensity, and decreasing the divergence of lasers through stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) and stimulated Mandelstam-Brillouin scattering (SMBS) is reported, along with a review of the principles of high power Raman lasers. Attention is given to pure rotational copropagated H2 Raman amplifiers as high efficiency frequency converters, to the regenerative Raman amplifier which involves an active medium in a Fabry-Perot or ring resonator, and to the scalability of pure rotational H2 Raman lasers, wich can yield 0.9 kJ. The achievement of high power diffraction limited short laser pulses using an SMBS phase conjugation technique is examined, as well as methods of maintaining the phase conjugation in order to sum the power of more than one laser beam. Particular mention is made of Nd amplifiers, and SMBS is shown to permit 2 ns laser pulses with an energy of 50 J.