title: Beyond nonlinear saturation of backward Raman amplifiers.
abstract: Backward Raman amplification is limited by relativistic nonlinear dephasing resulting in saturation of the leading spike of the amplified pulse. Pump detuning is employed to mitigate the relativistic phase mismatch and to overcome the associated saturation. The amplified pulse can then be reshaped into a monospike pulse with little precursory power ahead of it, with the maximum intensity increasing by a factor of two. This detuning can be employed advantageously both in regimes where the group velocity dispersion is unimportant and where the dispersion is important but small.
authors.affiliation: Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08543, USA.
authors.forename: Ido
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Barth
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical Engineering, Technion Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa 32000, Israel.
authors.forename: Zeev
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Toroker
authors.affiliation: Institute of Applied Physics RAS, Nizhnii Novgorod 603950, Russia.
authors.forename: Alexey A
authors.initials: AA
authors.lastname: Balakin
authors.affiliation: Department of Astrophysical Sciences, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08540, USA.
authors.forename: Nathaniel J
authors.initials: NJ
authors.lastname: Fisch