Propagation of ultrashort light pulses in a resonant medium

Mishkin's analytical treatment of ultrashort light pulse propagation in a resonant two-level medium is extended to discuss quantitatively the behavior of the pulse area, pulse energy, pulse shape, and initial population inversion density. The relationship of these properties to physically measurable parameters indicates that the nd u and sd u solutions are experimentally indistinguishable from the dn u and cn u solutions, respectively. The initial population inversion densities required for the dn u and nd u solutions to be stable are less than - 1 for values k < 1 and therefore not physically realizable. We conclude that cn u is the only physically significant solution to the Maxwell-Schroedinger equations.