Gurevich-Pitaevskii problem and its development

Abstract

We present an introduction to the theory of dispersive shock waves in the framework of the approach proposed by Gurevich and Pitaevskii (Zh. Eksp. Teor. Fiz., 65, 590 (1973) [Sov. Phys. JETP, 38, 291 (1974)]) based on the Whitham theory of modulation of nonlinear waves. We explain how Whitham equations for a periodic solution can be derived for the Korteweg-de Vries equation and outline some elementary methods to solve them. We illustrate this approach with solutions to the main problems discussed by Gurevich and Pitaevskii. We consider a generalization of the theory to systems with weak dissipation and discuss the theory of dispersive shock waves for the Gross-Pitaevskii equation.