Storage of ultrashort optical pulses in a resonantly absorbing Bragg reflector

A practical method of slowing and stopping an incident ultra-short light pulse with a resonantly absorbing Bragg reflector is demonstrated numerically. It is shown that an incident laser pulse with suitable pulse area evolves from a given pulse waveform into a stable, spatially-localized oscillating or standing gap soliton. We show that multiple gap solitons can be simultaneously spatially localized, resulting in efficient optical energy conversion and storage in the resonantly absorbing Bragg structure as atomically coherent states. (C) 2003 Optical Society of America.