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Abstract We study the (characteristic) Cauchy problem for the Maxwell‐Bloch equations of light‐matter interaction via asymptotics, under assumptions that prevent the generation of solitons. Our analysis clarifies some features of the sense in which physically‐motivated initial‐boundary conditions are satisfied. In particular, we present a proper Riemann‐Hilbert problem that generates the uniquecausalsolution to the Cauchy problem, that is, the solution vanishes outside of the light cone. Inside the light cone, we relate the leading‐order asymptotics to self‐similar solutions that satisfy a system of ordinary differential equations related to the Painlevé‐III (PIII) equation. We identify these solutions and show that they are related to a family of PIII solutions recently discovered in connection with several limiting processes involving the focusing nonlinear Schrödinger equation. We fully explain a resulting boundary layer phenomenon in which, even for smooth initial data (an incident pulse), the solution makes a sudden transition over an infinitesimally small propagation distance. At a formal level, this phenomenon has been described by other authors in terms of the PIII self‐similar solutions. We make this observation precise and for the first time we relate the PIII self‐similar solutions to the Cauchy problem. Our analysis of the asymptotic behavior satisfied by the optical field and medium density matrix reveals slow decay of the optical field in one direction that is actually inconsistent with the simplest version of scattering theory. Our results identify a precise generic condition on an optical pulse incident on an initially‐unstable medium sufficient for the pulse to stimulate the decay of the medium to its stable state. 

The increasing tritronquée solutions of the Painlevé-II equation with parameter α exhibit square-root asymptotics in the maximally-large sector |arg(x)| < 2π and have recently appeared in applications where it is necessary to understand the behavior of these solutions for complex values of α. Here these solutions are investigated from the point of view of a Riemann–Hilbert representation related to the Lax pair of Jimbo and Miwa, which naturally arises in the analysis of rogue waves of infinite order. We show that for generic complex α, all such solutions are asymptotically pole-free along the bisecting ray of the complementary sector |arg(−x)| < 1π that contains the poles far from the origin. This allows the definition of a total integral of the solution along the axis containing the bisecting ray, in which certain algebraic terms are subtracted at infinity and the poles are dealt with in the principal-value sense. We compute the value of this integral for all such solutions. We also prove that if the Painlevé-II parameter α is of the form α = ±1 + ip, p ∈ R \ {0}, one of the increasing tritronquée solutions has no poles or zeros whatsoever along the bisecting axis.