Propagation and interaction of ultrashort electromagnetic pulses in nonlinear media with a quadratic-cubic nonlinearity

Propagation of extremely short unipolar pulses of electromagnetic field (`videopulses') is considered in the framework of a model in which the material medium is represented by anharmonic oscillators (approximating bound electrons) with quadratic and cubic nonlinearities. Two families of exact analytical solutions (with positive or negative polarity) are found for the moving solitary pulses. Direct simulations demonstrate that the pulses are very robust against perturbations. Two unipolar pulses collide nearly elastically, while collisions between pulses with opposite polarities and a small relative velocity are inelastic, leading to emission of radiation and generation of a small-amplitude additional pulse.