Theory of pump–probe propagation in third-and higher-order, nonlinear optical media

Abstract

A theory to treat the propagation of an intense pump pulse and a weak probe pulse in nonlinear media is presented. We give a general formalism applicable to the pump–probe propagation in a variety of nonlinear optical media. Based on this formalism, we obtain first an analytic, closed-form solution of pump–probe propagation in a third-order nonlinear medium, including linear absorption, nonlinear refraction, and two-photon absorption. The effects of velocity mismatch are also considered in our results. The general formalism leads further to analytic results for pump–probe propagation in a medium with both third- and fifth-order nonlinearity.