Three-beam double stimulated Raman scatterings.

Two-beam stimulated Raman scattering with pump and Stokes beams is manifest in both the Raman loss of the pump beam and the Raman gain of the Stokes beam, and it has been used in various label-free bioimaging applications. Here, a three-beam stimulated Raman scattering that involves pump, Stokes, and depletion beams is considered, where two stimulated Raman gain-loss processes are deliberately made to compete with each other. It is shown that the three-beam Raman scattering process can be described by coupled differential equations for the increased numbers of Stokes and depletion beam photons. From approximate solutions of the coupled differential equations and numerical calculation results, it is shown that a highly efficient suppression of the Stokes Raman gain is possible by using an intense depletion beam whose frequency difference from that of the pump beam is identical to another acceptor Raman mode frequency. I anticipate that the present work will provide a theoretical framework for super-resolution stimulated Raman scattering microscopy.