The medium susceptibility related to stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) is known to be a complex value whose imaginary part
determines the SRS gain coefficient whereas the real part constitutes a small fraction of the refractive index at the frequencies
of the scattered emission that is proportional to the intensity of the exciting beam. Strong transverse nonuniformity of this
beam causes focusing of high-frequency components of the scattered light and defocusing of low-frequency ones that inevitably
affect their amplification efficiency. The effect for Gaussian pumping is responsible for a slight shift of the SRS gain spectrum
towards higher frequencies. The present work analyzes theoretically SRS excited by a Bessel light beam and demonstrates that
the axial component of the scattered emission experiences a frequency shift that is much greater than that for the case of
Gaussian beam pumping.
Key words Raman scattering - SRS amplification - Bessel beam - light-induced focusing
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Translated from Zhurnal Prikladnoi Spektroskopii, Vol. 75, No. 3, pp. 336–341, May–June, 2008.