Rayleigh vs Raman scattering for low saturation

In summary, Rayleigh scattering is an elastic scattering process where light interacts with particles much smaller than its wavelength, resulting in a scattering that is wavelength-dependent and inversely proportional to the fourth power of the wavelength. In contrast, Raman scattering is an inelastic scattering process where light interacts with molecular vibrations, leading to shifts in energy and providing information about molecular structure. For low saturation levels, Rayleigh scattering dominates due to its higher efficiency in scattering light, while Raman scattering becomes significant for analyzing molecular properties and is less affected by saturation effects.
  • #1
BillKet
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Hello! I have the following situation: I have a 3 level system, with 2 ground states, call them ##g_1## and ##g_2## and an excited state, ##e##, with energies ##E_{g1}<E_{g2}## and ##E_e##. I have a driving field with frequency ##\omega## such that ##\Gamma \ll \Delta \ll E_{g2}-E_{g1} \ll E_e - E_{g1}##, where ##\Gamma## is the linewidth of the excited state and ##\Delta## is the detuning of the excited state from the ##g_1\to e## transition. So basically the laser is very detuned from any transition in the system and we can assume that the laser power is small enough such that the saturation parameter, ##s## is much smaller than 1, so the probability of the atom getting excited to ##e## is virtually zero. I found in AMO books that in this case Rayleigh scattering dominates i.e. coherent scattering, compared to incoherent scattering i.e. decays from ##e## and the ratio of the 2 rates is ##\sim s##. However, as far as I can tell, these derivations don't take into account Raman transitions to ##g_2## (assuming we start in ##g_1##) in which ##e## doesn't get excited. These kinds of transitions are not Rayleigh (as the light frequency changes), but they are also not incoherent, as there is still a clear phase between the driving field and the emitted photon (but they have different frequencies). So, given my situation, how can I calculate the Rayleigh scattering rate vs Raman scattering rate (i.e. with both of them coherent processes and assuming that the dipole moment coupling between ##e## and ##g_1## is the same as the one between ##e## and ##g_2##)? Thank you!
 

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