Reshaping ultrashort light pulses in resonant photonic crystals

Ultrashort light pulses propagating through a resonant photonic crystal can be reshaped to shorter duration output through self-induced transparency. The reshaping process is shown to result from the unique transmission behavior of light pulses through the photonic structure. Pulse compression and pulse merging, with which multipeak optical pulses can be evolved to give rise to a single-peak, high-quality transmitted pulse output, are obtained. The pulse propagation in a resonant photonic crystal is compared with that in a bulk atomic medium, which shows that the effect of pulse reshaping is much more powerful in the former than in the latter. (c) 2006 Optical Society of America.