2007/04/04 by Neda Ghofraniha, Claudio Conti, Giancarlo Ruocco +1
Physics and Astronomy · #physics.optics #cond-mat.soft #nlin.PS #physics.flu-dyn
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.99.043903
published as Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 043903 (2007) · 5 pages, 5 figures
arxiv created 2007/04/04 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01
We investigate the formation of collisionless shocks along the spatial profile of a gaussian laser beam propagating in nonlocal nonlinear media. For defocusing nonlinearity the shock survives the smoothing effect of the nonlocal response, though its dynamics is qualitatively affected by the latter, whereas for focusing nonlinearity it dominates over filamentation. The patterns observed in a thermal defocusing medium are interpreted in the framework of our theory.