Photon echo in medium subjected simultaneously to extremely short and quasiresonant pulses

An investigation is made of a two-pulse photon echo in a two-level medium with strong inhomogeneous broadening, which is subjected simultaneously to extremely short and quasiresonant pulses. Two variants of the sequence of application of the two pulses are considered and it is shown that the kinetics of an echo signal depends largely on the sequence in which the pulses are applied. Suppression of the photon echo is predicted for both variants when a zero-are extremely short pulse is applied to a medium. A qualitative method for determination of the spatial characteristics of such a combined echo is proposed and used. It is shown that, in the investigated cases, the angular distributions of the echo-signal intensity in an extended medium are not as peaked as in the case of a conventional photon echo.