We study the ultraslow optical solitons in a resonant three-level atomic system via electromagnetically induced transparency under a density-matrix （DM） approach. The results of linear and nonlinear optical properties are compared with those obtained by using an amplitude variable （AV） approach. It is found that the results for both approaches are the same in the linear regime if the corresponding relations between the population-coherence decay rates in the DM approach and the energy-level decay rates in the AV approach are appropriately imposed. However, in the nonlinear regime there is a small difference for the self-phase modulation coefficient of the nonlinear SchrSdinger equation that governs the time evolution of probe pulse envelope. All analytical predicts are checked by numerical simulations.
