Stimulated Raman scattering: towards applications in nano and biophotonics

Stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) has been one of the first nonlinear phenomena to be discovered. In its long history, there have been dark and bright moments, but nowadays, there are new and promising perspectives in nanophotonics and biophotonics. One of the most important applications in nanophotonics is light amplifiers and laser sources. In this chapter, achievements of the last two decades, challenges, and perspectives of integrated laser sources based on SRS are reviewed alongside the trend towards nanophotonics. SRS microscopy plays an important role in biophotonics, among label-free nonlinear optical microscopies, enabling imaging systems, performing label-free imaging with high sensitivity, high spatial and spectral resolution, 3D sectioning, and fast image acquisition. In this chapter, we focus on the fidelity of SRS microscopy images. This is a crucial point for applications because it can be impaired by noise sources, limiting the achievable contrast and sensitivity, and by competitive effects, producing artifacts.