URL:
Abstract:
We report the first controlled experimental observation of solitary waves governed by the fifth-order dispersion Korteweg-de Vries (KdV) equation. To exactly cancel the cubic dispersion of the classical KdV equation, we use a mutual inductive coupling between nearest-neighbor inductors within a nonlinear electrical transmission line. We characterize the resulting solitary waves through direct spatiotemporal measurements of the dispersion relation, its oscillatory tail profiles, amplitude-width scaling, and amplitude-velocity relation, finding a good agreement with semi-analytical predictions. Collision experiments between two (co- or counter-propagating) solitary waves also show that their self-similar profile persists after interaction, up to a time shift.