The Maxwell-Bloch Equations

The last 40 years have witnessed an intensive and targeted growth of interest in the field of nonlinear optics, as a fascinating new field of research both with a vastness of applications in several systems related to communications, optical computing, etc. Furthermore, the analytical techniques, involved in the study of nonlinear optical phenomena, can be applied in other branches of the nonlinear physics, being tools of general character, as the perturbative approach used several times in the present thesis. The continuous development of ultra-short pulsed lasers allowed a sophisticated enlargement of the analysis of nonlinear optics on a wide range of systems, specifically concerning the matter-radiation interaction in the highly nonlinear regime.