Regularization of a sharp shock by the defocusing nonlinear Schrödinger equation

The defocusing nonlinear Schrödinger (NLS) equation is studied for a family of step-like initial data with piecewise constant amplitude and phase velocity with a single jump discontinuity at the origin. Riemann–Hilbert and steepest descent techniques are used to study the long-time/zero-dispersion limit of the solutions to NLS associated to this family of initial data. We show that the initial discontinuity is regularized in the long time/zero-dispersion limit by the emergence of five distinct regions in the (x, t) half-plane. These are left, right, and central plane waves separated by a rarefaction wave on the left and a slowly modulated elliptic wave on the right. Rigorous derivations of the leading order asymptotic behavior and error bounds are presented.