Related Experiment Video
Updated: Dec 5, 2025

Induction of Microstreaming by Nonspherical Bubble Oscillations in an Acoustic Levitation System
Published on: May 9, 2021
Formation of dispersive shock waves in a saturable nonlinear medium
Sergey K Ivanov1,2, Jules-Elémir Suchorski3, Anatoly M Kamchatnov1,2
1Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, Institutsky Lane 9, Dolgoprudny, Moscow Region 141700, Russia.
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 steplike 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.
Related Concept Videos
Shock Waves
When the source's speed approaches the speed of sound, constructive interference between successive wavefronts emitted by the source occurs immediately behind it. Initially, scientists believed that this constructive interference would result in such high...
Standing Waves in a Cavity
Travelling Waves
Water waves, sound waves, and seismic waves are some examples of mechanical waves. For water waves, the wave propagation medium is...
Propagation of Waves
Consider a scenario where a wave propagates from a string of low linear mass density to a string of high linear mass density. In such a case, the reflected wave is out of phase with respect to the incident wave, however the...
Types of Damping
Sound as Pressure Waves
The pressure fluctuation depends on the difference in displacements between the successive points in the...

