Fundamentals of Raman Amplification in Fibers.

Raman scattering was discovered independently and almost simultaneously in 1928 by groups in India and Russia [1, 2]. If C.V. Raman had not published first we might know Raman scattering as the Landsberg-Mandelstam Effect. Raman was awarded the 1930 Nobel Prize for the discovery, which was not shared with the Russians. Neither group was actually looking for what we now know as the Raman effect [3]. Landsberg and Mandelstahm were looking for a small wavelength shift due to scattering from thermal fluctuations, now called "Brillouin scattering." Raman was seeking an optical analogue of the Compton effect. It was quickly understood that Raman scattering is a shift in the frequency of scattered light due to interaction of the incident light with high-frequency vibrational modes of a transparent material. It was later pointed out that the correct interpretation had been predicted by A. Smekal in an obscure 1923 theoretical paper [4]. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]