Summary of Stimulated Raman Scattering Experiments in the Nova Air-Path and Projected Nova and Nova II System Performance Limits

The authors present the results of high intensity beam propagation experiments conducted with the Nova laser system to investigate the occurrence of stimulated rotational Raman scattering (SRRS) from atmospheric nitrogen in the beam path. Enclosed is a preprint entitled ''Stimulated Rotational Raman Scattering in Nitrogen in Long Air Paths'' that they have published in the November issue of Optics Letters. The physics issues associated with SRRS are discussed at length in the preprint. The small signal steady-state SRRS gain coefficient that they determined from threshold measurements is in excellent agreement with recent direct SRRS gain measurements by Bischel, et al., at SRI, and is in good agreement with early gain estimates from Averbakh, et al., in the Soviet Union. Consequently, they have a high degree of confidence in the gain coefficient. In addition, threshold SRRS experiments on the long air-path Nova II system are in substantial agreement with the earlier Nova experiments. Nova and Nova II system performance limitations were not critically addressed in the publication so they shall discuss these issues in this paper.