The Whitham approach to Generalized Hydrodynamics

Abstract: The formation of dispersive shock waves in the one-dimensional Bose gas represents a limitation of Generalized Hydrodynamics (GHD) due to the coarse-grained nature of the theory. Nevertheless, GHD accurately captures the long wavelength behavior indicating an implicit knowledge of the underlying microscopic physics. Such representation are already known through the Whitham modulation theory, where dispersion-less equations describe the evolution of the slowly varying shock wave parameters. Here we study the correspondence between Whithams approach to the Gross-Pitaevskii equation and GHD in the semi-classical limit. Our findings enable the recovery of the shock wave solution directly from GHD simulations, which we demonstrate for both zero and finite temperature. Additionally, we study how free expansion protocols affect the shock wave density and their implications for experimental detection. The combined picture of Whitham and GHD lends itself to additional physical interpretation regarding the formation of shock waves. Further, this picture exhibits clear analogies to the theory of Quantum GHD, and we discuss possible routes to establish an explicit connection between them.