Higher Conservation Laws for Coherent Optical Pulse Propagation in an Inhomogeneously Broadened Medium

The description of coherent optical pulse propagation in terms of coupled Maxwell and Schroedinger- Bloch equations in slowly varying envelope approximation possesses conservation laws in addition to those of field energy and field momentum. Comparison with preliminary numerical results has shown that these higher conservation laws can be used to predict the amplitude of each of the 2pi pulses into which an intense coherent pulse may decompose as it propagates through an attenuator. In the present paper a comparison with more extensive numerical results is carried out. It is shown that over a wide range of variation of the parameters involved the conservation laws yield results in agreement with those obtained through numerical computation.