Shock structure for electromagnetic waves in bianisotropic, nonlinear materials

Shock waves are discontinuous solutions to quasi-linear partial differential equations and can be studied through a singular perturbation known as the vanishing viscosity technique. The vanishing viscosity method is a means of smoothing the shock, which we use to study the case of electromagnetic waves in bianisotropic materials. We derive the conditions arising from this smoothing procedure for a traveling wave, and the waves are classified as fast, slow, or intermediate shock waves.