Determination of the stimulated raman scattering threshold for a pump pulse of arbitrary width

A theoretical solution to the problem of determining the stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) threshold has been found within the undepleted pump approximation for a pump pulse of arbitrary width, which distinguishes it from the known solutions for the limiting cases of very short (highly transient SRS) and very long (quasi-steady-state SRS) pump pulses with respect to the oscillation dephasing time of the SRS medium. The general formula of the theoretical estimate of SRS threshold, in dependence of not only the pump radiation intensity and the SRS interaction length but also the pump-pulse width, is obtained based on the found solution. The theoretical estimate of the SRS threshold has been shown to be in good agreement with the experimental results on the excitation of picosecond SRS in crystals, which justifies the new express method for estimating the SRS gain in experimental measurements of the picosecond SRS threshold.