Light-induced spatial gratings created by unipolar attosecond pulses coherently interacting with a resonant medium

Recently, the possibility of the creation, erasing and ultrafast control of polarization and population inversion gratings by sequences of few-cycle bipolar pulses interacting with a medium in a resonant and coherent way was predicted. In this case, the overlapping of pulses in the medium is not needed for the creation of gratings. In this paper, we study the possibility of the ultrafast creation and control of spatial periodic gratings in a resonant medium when subcycle unipolar pulses (that is ones containing the constant spectral component of an electric field) propagate in the coherent regime. (letter)