Formation of dispersive shock waves in a saturable nonlinear medium

Abstract

We use the Gurevich-Pitaevskii approach based on the Whitham averaging method for studying the formation of dispersive shock waves in an intense light pulse propagating through a saturable nonlinear medium. Although the Whitham modulation equations cannot be diagonalized in this case, the main characteristics of the dispersive shock can be derived by means of an analysis of the properties of these equations at the boundaries of the shock. Our approach generalizes a previous analysis of step-like initial intensity distributions to a more realistic type of initial light pulse and makes it possible to determine, in a setting of experimental interest, the value of measurable quantities such as the wave-breaking time or the position and light intensity of the shock edges.

arXiv comment18 pages, 12 figures

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Cited by in corpus (6)

• Quantitative Analysis of Shock Wave Dynamics in a Fluid of Light
• Dissipation-enhanced collapse singularity of a nonlocal fluid of light in a hot atomic vapor
• Formation of dispersive shock waves in evolution of a two-temperature collisionless plasma
• Spin-orbit-coupled fluids of light in bulk nonlinear media
• Shock wave generation and propagation in dissipative and nonlocal nonlinear Rydberg media
• Static and dynamic properties of self-bound droplets of light in hot vapours