Anomalous refraction of an ultrashort light pulse at a nonlinear interface of dielectric media

This paper discusses the refraction of an ultrashort pulse of an electromagnetic field at a nonlinear interface of dielectric media. The nonlinearity is caused by the presence of a thin film of resonance-absorbing atoms. When local-field effects are negligible, the system of model equations is completely integrable, and this makes it possible to find an exact solution. It is shown that the refracted pulse breaks up into several solitons, whose number depends on the angle of incidence. (C) 2015 Optical Society of America.