Nonlinear sawtooth-shaped waves

This survey is devoted to experimental and theoretical results on interaction and self-action processes of strongly distorted waves containing shock fronts. Such sawtooth-shaped disturbances can be formed during the propagation of the wave through media where the nonlinearity predominates over competitive factors like dispersion, diffraction, and absorption. The specificity of nonlinear processes for sawtooth-shaped waves is particularly emphasised. The recently observed phenomena such as self-action of beams, self-refraction of shock pulses and saturation of the signal in focus, as well as current applied problems, are described.