Experimental Observation of Near-Field Deterioration Induced by Stimulated Rotational Raman Scattering in Long Air Paths

We report the experimental investigation of a stimulated rotational Raman scattering effect in long air paths on SG-III TIL, with a 1053 nm, 20-cm-diameter, linearly polarized, 3 ns flat-topped laser pulse. An intense speckle pattern of near field with thickly dotted hot spots is observed at the end of propagation with an intensity-length product above 17 TW/cm. The Stokes developing from the scattering of the laser beam by quantum fluctuations is characterized by a combination of high spatial frequency components. The observed speckle pattern with small-diameter hot spots results from the combination of the nonlinear Raman amplification and the linear diffraction propagation effect of the Stokes with a noise pattern arising from the spontaneous Raman scattering. A new promising suppression concept based on the special characteristic of the Stokes, called active and selective filtering of Stokes, is proposed.