Shock waves in disordered media

Phys Rev Lett. 2012 Dec 14;109(24):243902. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.109.243902. Epub 2012 Dec 10.

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.