Steady pulse propagation in an inhomogeneously broadened resonant medium

George L. Lamb

George L. Lamb

Andrei I. Maimistov, Edward A. Manykin

Hari Prakash, G. S. Bhatnagar

Ljubomir Matulic, G. F. Torres-Cisneros, J. J. Sánchez-Mondragón

We present a numerical study of the nonsteady state pulse propagation in a resonant inhomogeneously broadened absorber embedded in a dielectric medium with a Kerr-type nonlinearity. We abandon the a priori assumption for the existence of steady state solutions and examine the problem from a more physical point of view, i.e., we study the way in which the pulse actually propagates in the resonant Kerr medium and whether it eventually evolves toward a steady state. We find that the individual atomic dipoles are dephased and that their evolution depends on detunings. We believe that this is the reason for small energy losses which deny the attainment of a truly steady state pulse.

Ljubomir Matulic, G. E. Torres-Cisneros, Javier J. Sanchez-Mondragon

We present a numerical study of the non-steady-state pulse propagation in a resonant inhomogeneously broadened absorber embedded in a dielectric medium with a Kerr-type nonlinearity. We find that the individual atomic dipoles are dephased and that their evolution depends on their detunings. We think that this is the reason for small energy losses that prevent the pulse from attaining a truly steady-state nature. We discuss the implications of this result in relation to previous studies. Our results point to the existence of near-steady-state Kerr pulses, similar to the ideal solitons.