Beam-pointing fluctuations in a gain-guided Raman amplifier

Abstract

We present a measurement of the beam-pointing fluctuations of a transient Raman-amplifier output using an interferometric method and a theoretical treatment of the three-dimensional, spatial propagation of transient stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) including the fluctuations of the Stokes field giving rise to the beam-pointing fluctuations. The theory is based on an effective steady-state model for the transient SRS process. By using nonorthogonal transverse modes to expand the field, we incorporate the effects of excess spontaneous-emission noise associated with gain-guided amplifiers. The agreement of the measurements with the theoretical treatment demonstrates that the beam-pointing jitter is caused by quantum noise. The beam-pointing fluctuations increase as the Fresnel number of the interaction volume increases because more spatial modes are excited.