Propagation of laser pulses under conditions of adiabatic population transfer

A medium of three-level absorbing atoms is considered under conditions of adiabatic population transfer. A study is made of the characteristics of spatial propagation of two delayed (relative to one another) Gaussian pulses. It is shown that selective excitation of a two-photon resonant state with a near-unity probability is conserved over the length of a medium, which is considerably greater than the absorption length of a weak probe pulse in the absence of the second field.