Abstract. The dynamics of generation and propagation of ultraslow optical solitons in a lifetime-broadened five-level hyper inverted-Y atomic system are investigated. Due to the novel absorption and dispersion properties of this system which provide the necessary ingredients for making the probe field propagate nearly transparent in three regimes, the generation of bright or dark optical solitons can be controlled with parameters management by actively manipulating the dispersion, the nonlinearity and the gain (absorption coefficient) via adjusting the corresponding one-, two- and three-photon detunings and the Rabi frequencies.

Print publication: Issue 22 (28 November 2009)
Received 26 July 2009, in final form 29 September 2009
Published 30 October 2009