Subfemtosecond pulse generation by cascade-stimulated Raman scattering with modulated Raman excitation

Subfemtosecond (sub-fs) pulses can be generated by cascade-stimulated Raman scattering in a Raman medium with modulated Raman excitations, driven by two sufficiently intense laser beams, one of which is amplitude modulated. The nonadiabatic Raman interaction establishes a strong modulated Raman coherence, which supports compression of the generated broadband Raman sidebands to a train of sub-fs pulses regardless of whether the carrier frequencies of the driving lasers are tuned above, below or on two-photon Raman resonance. (letter to the editor)