{"id":1383,"date":"2025-10-23T11:33:55","date_gmt":"2025-10-23T01:33:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qo.lab.uq.edu.au\/?p=1383"},"modified":"2026-02-20T13:46:29","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T03:46:29","slug":"nonlinear-wave-dynamics-on-a-chip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qo.lab.uq.edu.au\/?p=1383","title":{"rendered":"Paper: Nonlinear wave dynamics on a chip"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This paper has been published in Science<\/em>!<\/p>\n\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n

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17 Apr 2025<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Abstract<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Shallow water waves are a striking example of nonlinear hydrodynamics, giving rise to phenomena such as tsunamis and undular waves. These dynamics are typically studied in hundreds-of-meter-long wave flumes. Here, we demonstrate a chip-scale, quantum-enabled wave flume. The wave flume exploits nanometer-thick superfluid helium films and optomechanical interactions to achieve nonlinearities surpassing those of extreme terrestrial flows. Measurements reveal wave steepening, shock fronts, and soliton fission — nonlinear behaviors long predicted in superfluid helium but never previously directly observed. Our approach enables lithography-defined wave flume geometries, optomechanical control of hydrodynamic properties, and orders of magnitude faster measurements than terrestrial flumes. Together, this opens a new frontier in hydrodynamics, combining quantum fluids and nanophotonics to explore complex wave dynamics at microscale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Authors<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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Matt Reeves<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Walter Wasserman<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Raymond Harrison<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Igor Marinkovi\u0107<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Nicole Luu<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Andreas Sawadsky<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Yasmine Sfendla<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Glen Harris<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Warwick Bowen<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Christopher Baker<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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17 Apr 2025 Abstract Shallow water waves are a striking example of nonlinear hydrodynamics, giving rise to phenomena such as tsunamis and undular waves. These dynamics are typically studied in hundreds-of-meter-long wave flumes. Here, we demonstrate a chip-scale, quantum-enabled wave flume. The wave flume exploits nanometer-thick superfluid helium films and optomechanical interactions to achieve nonlinearities […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1387,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/qo.lab.uq.edu.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/hydrodynamics_post-1.png","author_info":{"display_name":false,"author_link":"https:\/\/qo.lab.uq.edu.au\/?author=1"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/qo.lab.uq.edu.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/hydrodynamics_post-1.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qo.lab.uq.edu.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qo.lab.uq.edu.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qo.lab.uq.edu.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qo.lab.uq.edu.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qo.lab.uq.edu.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1383"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/qo.lab.uq.edu.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1383\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1820,"href":"https:\/\/qo.lab.uq.edu.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1383\/revisions\/1820"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qo.lab.uq.edu.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1387"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qo.lab.uq.edu.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qo.lab.uq.edu.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qo.lab.uq.edu.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}