page_title: Raman scattering
section_title: Instrumentation
hierarchical_section_title: Raman scattering / Instrumentation
caption_attribution_description: English: Raman spectrum of Benzene showing both Stokes and anti-Stokes lines around the exciting 4358.3 angstrom line. Originally published in Nature in 1929 by Raman and Krishnan.
context_page_description: Raman scattering or the Raman effect is the inelastic scattering of photons by matter, meaning that there is an exchange of energy and a change in the light's direction. Typically this involves vibrational energy being gained by a molecule as incident photons from a visible laser are shifted to lower energy. This is called normal Stokes Raman scattering. The effect is exploited by chemists and physicists to gain information about materials for a variety of purposes by performing various forms of Raman spectroscopy. Many other variants of Raman spectroscopy allow rotational energy to be examined and electronic energy levels may be examined if an X-ray source is used in addition to other possibilities. More complex techniques involving pulsed lasers, multiple laser beams and so on are known.
  Light has a certain probability of being scattered by a material. When photons are scattered, most of them are elastically scattered, such that the scattered photons have the same energy as the incident photons but different direction. Rayleigh scattering usually has an intensity in the range 0.1% to 0.01% relative to that of a radiation source.
context_section_description: Modern Raman spectroscopy nearly always involves the use of lasers as an exciting light source. Because lasers were not available until more than three decades after the discovery of the effect, Raman and Krishnan used a mercury lamp and photographic plates to record spectra. Early spectra took hours or even days to acquire due to weak light sources, poor sensitivity of the detectors and the weak Raman scattering cross-sections of most materials. The most common modern detectors are charge-coupled devices (CCDs). Photodiode arrays and photomultiplier tubes were common prior to the adoption of CCDs.
caption: An early Raman spectrum of benzene published by Raman and Krishnan.[8]
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