Theory of pump-probe propagation in third- and higher-order, nonlinear optical media

A theory to treat the propagation of an intense pump pulse and a weak probe pulse in nonlinear media is presented. We give a general formalism applicable to the pump-probe propagation in a variety of nonlinear optical media. Based on this formalism, we obtain first an analytic, closed-form solution of pump-probe propagation in a third-order nonlinear medium, including linear absorption, nonlinear refraction, and two-photon absorption. The effects of velocity mismatch are also considered in our results. The general formalism leads further to analytic results for pump-probe propagation in a medium with both third- and fifth-order nonlinearity. (C) 2004 Optical Society of America