Quantitative analysis of shock waves dynamics in a fluid of light

Mathieu Isoard

A light pulse propagating in a nonlinear medium behaves as a fluid and may experience wave breaking, leading to the formation of a dispersive shock wave.

We report experimental observations of optical dispersive shock waves realized by sending a specially designed laser beam onto a nonlinear optical cell. We show that the structure of the optical shock are well described by recent theoretical developments of Whitham modulation theory.

Related paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2101.00720