Abstract
We investigate the formation of collisionless shocks along the spatial profile of a Gaussian laser beam propagating in nonlocal nonlinear media. For defocusing nonlinearity the shock survives the smoothing effect of the nonlocal response, though its dynamics is qualitatively affected by the latter, whereas for focusing nonlinearity it dominates over filamentation. The patterns observed in a thermal defocusing medium are interpreted in the framework of our theory.
- Received 18 January 2007
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.99.043903
©2007 American Physical Society