Nonlinear transmission of a hollow waveguide containing a saturable absorber
Résumé
The long-distance transmission of an oversized metallic waveguide filled with a gas of two-level atoms and excited in its lowest order mode is calculated within the coupled-mode theory in the general situation where the absorption and the nonlinearity are both strong. Although the gas polarization then involves numerous modes, it is shown that the modal dispersion can prevent any significant excitation of the higher order modes of the field. The propagation of stepwise light pulses is studied in this approximation.