Superluminal propagation of solitary kinklike waves in amplifying media

Maciej Janowicz and Jan Mostowski

It is shown that solitary-wave, kinklike structures can propagate superluminally in two- and four-level amplifying media with strongly damped oscillations of coherences. This is done by solving analytically the Maxwell-Bloch equations in the kinetic limit. It is also shown that the true wave fronts—unlike the pseudo wave fronts of the kinks—must propagate with velocity c, so that no violation of special relativity is possible. The conditions of experimental verification are discussed.

Phys. Rev. E vol. 73, 046613 - 1-9 (2006) [2/2]