Few-cycle solitons of an integrable generalization of the reduced Maxwell-Bloch equations

Abstract

The physical generalization of the system of the reduced Maxwell-Bloch equations describing the nonlinear interaction of the laser pulses with the multilevel quantum medium is obtained without using the slowly varying envelope approximation. It is shown that this system is integrable in the frameworks of the inverse scattering transformation method. The soliton and breather solutions in the form of the unipolar and few-cycle pulses are constructed. Their distinctive features caused solely by the multilevel structure of the medium are discussed. It is revealed that the collision of the solitons can lead to an appearance of the large-amplitude short-living pulse, whose dynamics resembles that of rogue waves.