Paraxial energy transport of a focused Gaussian beam in ruby with nondegenerate two-wave couplinglike mechanism

Paraxial energy transport of an intensity-modulated and focused Gaussian beam is studied in ruby. Deformations of the temporal profiles are observed under different conditions and explained by the interplay among a nondegenerate two-wave couplinglike mechanism, the population oscillations, and the Fraunhofer diffraction. Experimental evidence is provided for the existence of a nondegenerate two-wave couplinglike mechanism. The self-superluminal can be observed under proper conditions. A group velocity of −83m∕s is achieved with a Gaussian-like-modulated pulse of 30ms with background illumination. Based on these results, a method to control the group velocity of a single beam in such media is proposed.