Shock waves in disordered media

TL;DR

This paper experimentally explores how disorder influences shock wave formation in nonlinear optical media, revealing a phase diagram and confirming theoretical predictions with quantitative agreement.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive experimental study of shock waves in disordered nonlinear media and establishes a phase diagram linking nonlinearity and disorder.

Findings

Shock point depends on disorder level and wave amplitude

Existence of a phase diagram in nonlinearity-disorder space

Quantitative agreement with hydrodynamic theoretical model

Abstract

We experimentally investigate the interplay between spatial shock waves and the degree of disorder during nonlinear optical propagation in a thermal defocusing medium. We characterize the way the shock point is affected by the amount of disorder and scales with wave amplitude. Evidence for the existence of a phase diagram in terms of nonlinearity and amount of randomness is reported. The results are in quantitative agreement with a theoretical approach based on the hydrodynamic approximation.