Abstract

When high-power picosecond light pulses traveled along hollow-core optical fibers filled by transparent neat organic liquids, envelope shock waves at the leading edge of these pulses were discovered.¹ It should be noted that optical shock waves are the spatial and temporal analogies of solitons. Such waves might be described by the set of differential equations identical to those for the self-focusing effect if one spatial coordinate in these equations is exchanged for a temporal one. Similarly to high-order optical solitons, the shock waves realize effective temporal compression for light pulses.

© 1995 Optical Society of America