The research in this proposal continues investigations initiated under NSF grant ECS-8213373 of the basic physics of multiwave Raman Scattering and its application to the development of efficient coherent radiation sources in the vacuum ultraviolet. The work will examine experimentally and theoretically the propagation of intense laser Stokes pusles in an ideal Raman medium under conditions where a significant coherence is induced between the two levels on a time scale that is short compared with the material relaxation times. In addition to pulse reshaping effects, coherent Raman propagation allows the initial laser energy to be redistributed among all the Stokes and anti-Stokes waves accessible to the system. This is a new dimension to the two-photon pulse propagation problem not previously studied, and one that has significant application in the generation of tunable vuv radiation.
