Optical Precursors with Self-induced Transparency

TL;DR

This paper theoretically analyzes optical precursors in a medium with self-induced transparency, deriving an approximate expression for the main-field delay that aligns with numerical solutions of Maxwell-Bloch equations.

Contribution

It introduces a theoretical framework for understanding optical precursors with self-induced transparency and provides an analytic expression for the delay of the main field.

Findings

Derived an approximate analytic expression for the main-field delay.

The analytic results agree well with numerical Maxwell-Bloch simulations.

Extended understanding of optical precursors in self-induced transparency regimes.

Abstract

Optical Sommerfeld-Brillouin precursors significantly ahead of a main field of comparable amplitude have been recently observed in an opaque medium with an electromagnetically induced transparency window [Wei et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 103, 093602 (2009)]. We theoretically analyze in this paper the somewhat similar results obtained when the transparency is induced by the propagating field itself and we establish an approximate analytic expression of the time-delay of the main-field arrival, which fits fairly well the result obtained by numerically solving the Maxwell-Bloch equations.