Invariant pulse propagation and self-phase modulation in dense media

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Abstract
Analytical solutions for the slowly varying phase as well as the field amplitude are obtained for invariant pulse propagation in resonant absorbing media consisting of interacting two-level atoms. Such media, having many atoms within a cubic wavelength, have been shown to exhibit large frequency chirps in pulse propagation owing to near-dipole–dipole interactions. Departures from hyperbolic-secant pulse envelopes and pulse areas other than 2π have been shown to occur in invariant pulse propagation. We show that self-phase modulation results from the near-dipole–dipole interactions and can cause strong modification of pulse shapes, including temporal narrowing and multipulse behavior.