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 steplike 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 Schrödinger equation.
No takes yet. Share an insight, caveat, or question.
Xu et al. (2017) studied this question.