Dispersive dam-break flow of a photon fluid

2017/03/28 by Gang Xu, Matteo Conforti, Alexandre Kudlinski +2 · 3 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #physics.optics #nlin.PS #nlin.SI #physics.flu-dyn

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.118.254101

published as Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 254101 (2017)

arxiv created 2017/03/28 · arxiv updated 2017/06/28

Abstract

We investigate the temporal photonic analogue of the dam-break phenomenon for shallow water by exploiting a fiber optics setup. We clearly observe the decay of the step-like input (photonic dam) into a pair of oppositely propagating rarefaction wave and dispersive shock wave. Our results show evidence for a critical transition of the dispersive shock into a self-cavitating state. The detailed observation of the cavitating state dynamics allows for a fully quantitative test of the Whitham modulation theory applied to the universal defocusing nonlinear Schroedinger equation.

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