Propagation of extremely short electromagnetic pulses in a doubly-resonant medium

Abstract

Propagation of extremely short electromagnetic pulses in a homogeneous doublyresonant medium is considered in the framework of the total Maxwell-Duffing-Lorentz model, where the Duffing oscillators (anharmonic oscillators with cubic nonlinearities) represent the dielectric response of the medium, and the Lorentz harmonic oscillators represent the magnetic response. The wave propagation is governed by the one-dimensional Maxwell equations.It is shown that the model possesses a one-parameter family of traveling-wave solutions with the structure of single or multiple humps. Solutions are parametrized by the velocity of propagation. The spectrum of possible velocities is shown to be continuous on a small interval at the lower end of the spectrum; elsewhere the velocities form a discrete set. A correlation between the number of humps and the velocity is established. The traveling-wave solutions are found to be stable with respect to weak perturbations. Numerical simulations demonstrate that the traveling-wave pulses collide in a nearly elastic fashion.