Bistable moving optical solitons in resonant photonic crystals

Abstract

We consider some new aspects of the formation of moving optical solitons in a medium of Bragg-type resonant grating doped with two-level atoms. For generality, account is taken of the local-field effect assisted by a sufficiently high density of resonant atoms. It is established analytically that there exists a family of soliton solutions to the two-wave Maxwell-Bloch system of equations, with these solitons exhibiting bistable properties. The existence of bistable solitons and their properties are confirmed by numerical simulations.