Nonlinear Dynamics of Wave Fields in Nonresonant Media: From Envelope Solitons toward Video Solitons

We analyze a new class of soliton solutions for a wave field, which describes propagation of soliton-like structures of a circularly polarized electromagnetic field comprising a finite number of field-oscillation periods in a transparent nonresonant medium. The considered solutions feature a smooth transition from the soliton solutions of Schröodinger type, which correspond to long pulses with a large number of field oscillations, to extremely short, virtually single-cycle video pulses. We show that such solutions can also be important for linearly polarized laser fields. The structural stability of few-optical-cycle solitons is demonstrated numerically, including the case of their collision. Based on stability analysis and with allowance for the genealogic relation between the obtained wave solitons and the solitons of the nonlinear Schröodinger equation, we argue that the former solitons can play the same fundamental role in the nonlinear dynamics of the considered wave fields. In particular, it is shown by numerical simulations that the few-optical-cycle solutions turn out to be the basic elementary components of such a dynamical process as the temporal compression of an initially long pulse to a pulse of very short duration. In this case, the minimum duration of a compressed pulse is determined by soliton structures of about minimal duration.