Beyond the pulse-area theorem: Role of the absorption and the dispersion in the propagation of weak ultrashort resonant pulses

✍ Scribed by J.C. Delagnes; M.A. Bouchene

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2008
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 557 KB
• Volume: 281
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0030-4018
• DOI: 10.1016/j.optcom.2008.08.047

✦ Synopsis

We present here some fundamental but yet underlooked features of the propagation of weak ultrashort pulses (with D d s << 1, where D d is the Doppler width and s is the pulse duration) in resonant atomic media. We show that the pulse area behaviour and the pulse spectrum at resonance are governed by the usual optical depth (a 0 L, where a 0 is the absorption coefficient at resonance and L the length of the medium), whereas the pertinent parameter that governs the severity of the dispersion effects and the distortion of the pulse is the dispersion parameter e disp = (a 0 L)D d s that we introduce. Paradoxical effect such as distortionless propagation (e.g. e disp << 1) with vanishing pulse area (when a 0 L >> 1) can then explained within this formalism.