Resonant optical pulses on a continuous wave background in two-level active media

Abstract

We present exact N-soliton optical pulses riding on a continuous-wave (c.w.) beam that propagate through and interact with a two-level active optical medium. Their representation is derived via an appropriate generalization of the inverse scattering transform for the corresponding Maxwell-Bloch equations. We describe the single-soliton solutions in detail and classify them into several distinct families. In addition to the analogues of traveling-wave soliton pulses that arise in the absence of a c.w. beam, we obtain breather-like structures, periodic pulse-trains and rogue-wave-type (i.e., rational) pulses, whose existence is directly due to the presence of the c.w. beam. These soliton solutions are the analogues for Maxwell-Bloch systems of the four classical solution types of the focusing nonlinear Schrodinger equation with non-zero background, although the physical behavior of the corresponding solutions is quite different.

arXiv comment10 pages, 10 figures, to appear in Europhys. Lett

References in corpus (5)

• Rogue waves of the Hirota and the Maxwell-Bloch equations
• Rogue wave triggered at a critical frequency of a nonlinear resonant medium
• Inverse scattering transform for two-level systems with nonzero background
• Stochastic Pulse Switching in a Degenerate Resonant Optical Medium
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Cited by in corpus (2)

• Inverse scattering transform for two-level systems with nonzero background
• On Maxwell-Bloch systems with inhomogeneous broadening and one-sided nonzero background