Dispersive shock waves are a universal phenomenon encountered in many fields of science, ranging from fluid dynamics, Bose-Einstein condensates and geophysics. It has been established that light behaves as a perfect fluid when propagating in an optical medium exhibiting a weakly self-defocusing nonlinearity. Consequently, this analogy has become attractive for the exploration of dispersive shock wave phenomena. Here, we observe of a novel class of vectorial dispersive shock waves in nonlinear fiber optics. Analogous to blast-waves, identified in inviscid perfect fluids, vectorial dispersive shock waves are triggered by a non-uniform double piston imprinted on a continuous-wave probe via nonlinear cross-phase modulation, produced by an orthogonally-polarized pump pulse. The nonlinear phase potential imparted on the probe results in the formation of an expanding zone of zero intensity surrounded by two repulsive oscillating fronts, which move away from each other with opposite velocities.

色散冲击波是在许多科学领域中遇到的普遍现象，涉及流体动力学，玻色-爱因斯坦凝聚物和地球物理学。已经确定，当光在表现出弱自散焦非线性的光学介质中传播时，光表现为完美的流体。因此，这种类比对于色散冲击波现象的探索变得有吸引力。在这里，我们观察到非线性光纤中一类新型的矢量色散冲击波。类似于在不粘稠的流体中识别出的爆炸波，矢量色散冲击波由正交极化泵浦脉冲产生的非均匀双活塞通过非线性交叉相位调制压印在连续波探头上而触发。