On cavity modification of stimulated Raman scattering

We study theoretically stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) in a nonlinear dielectric microcavity and compare SRS thresholds for the cavity and the bulk material it is made of. We show that cavity SRS enhancement results solely from the intensity build up in the cavity and from the differences of the SRS dynamics in free and confined space. There is no significant modification of the Raman gain due to cavity QED effects. We show that the SRS threshold depends significantly on the nature of the dominating cavity decay as well as on the coupling technique with the cavity used for SRS measurements.