Abstract

Brillouin’s classic results¹ describing the propagation of an optical pulse in a Lorentz medium are not useful for describing the onset of the pulse because his nonuniform asymptotic analysis breaks down in the vicinity of the pulse arrival. This can be corrected by applying uniform asymptotic techniques. We have found that the results of such an analysis agree with Brillouin’s results away from the region of the pulse arrival but do not agree precisely with Sommerfeld’s classic expression² for the field at its onset.

© 1991 Optical Society of America