ADIABATIC DYNAMICAL CONTROL PHYSICS OF DIELECTRIC MEDIA

We summarize recent developments in the area of the coherent propagati on of laser pulses through dielectric media. We will show that the pri nciple of dynamical adiabaticity opens new avenues to control the non- perturbative and resonant interaction between two laser pulses and a t hree-level medium. Examples include the formation of stable wave forms that can travel through optical dielectric media in a loss-free manne r with arbitrary pulse shapes, novel possibilities to store optical in formation in dielectric media in the form of spatially dependent excit ations and techniques to exploit this information to control laser pul se envelopes.