Pattern Formation And Solitons

By virtue of Rayleigh-Benard convection, we illustrate the advantages of combining a hydrodynamic pattern forming instability with a thermodynamic critical point. This has already lead to many novel unexpected observations and is further shown to possess opportunities for the study of exciting fundamental problems in nonequilibrium systems.

The Cross-Newell equations for hexagons and triangles are derived for general real gradient systems, and are found to be in flux-divergence form. Specific examples of complex governing equations that give rise to hexagons and triangles and which have Lyapunov functionals are also considered, and explicit forms of the Cross-Newell equations are found in these cases. The general nongradient case is also discussed; in contrast with the gradient case, the equations are not flux-divergent. In all cases, the phase stability boundaries and modes of instability for general distorted hexagons and triangles can be recovered from the Cross-Newell equations.

We report on surface wave pattern formation in a Faraday experiment operated at a very shallow filling level, where modes with a subharmonic and harmonic time dependence interact. Associated with this distinct temporal behavior are different pattern selection mechanisms, favoring squares or hexagons, respectively. In a series of bifurcations running through a pair of superlattices the surface wave pattern transforms between the two incompatible symmetries. The close analogy to 2D and 3D crystallography is pointed out.

It is shown numerically and analytically that the front propagation process in the framework of the Swift-Hohenberg model is determined by periodic nucleation events triggered by the explosive growth of the localized zero-eigenvalue mode of the corresponding linear problem. We derive the evolution equation for this mode using asymptotic analysis, and evaluate the time interval between nucleation events, and hence the front speed. In the presence of noise, we derive the velocity exponent of ``thermally activated'' front propagation (creep) beyond the pinning threshold.

We consider a curved chain of nonlinear oscillators and show that the interplay of curvature and nonlinearity leads to a symmetry breaking when an asymmetric stationary state becomes energetically more favorable than a symmetric stationary state. We show that the energy of localized states decreases with increasing curvature, i.e. bending is a trap for nonlinear excitations. A violation of the Vakhitov-Kolokolov stability criterium is found in the case where the instability is due to the softening of the Peierls internal mode.

Bifurcation problems in which periodic boundary conditions or Neumann boundary conditions are imposed often involve partial differential equations that have Euclidean symmetry. As a result the normal form equations for the bifurcation may be constrained by the ``hidden'' Euclidean symmetry of the equations, even though this symmetry is broken by the boundary conditions. The effects of such hidden rotation symmetry on D 4 + ˙ T 2 mode interactions are studied by analyzing when a D 4 + ˙ T 2 symmetric normal form F ~ can be extended to a vector field F with Euclidean symmetry. The fundamental case of binary mode interactions between two irreducible representations of D 4 + ˙ T 2 is treated in detail. Necessary and sufficient conditions are given that permit F ~ to be extended when the Euclidean group E(2) acts irreducibly. When the Euclidean action is reducible, the rotations do not impose any constraints on the normal form of the binary mode interaction. In applications, this dependence on the representation of E(2) implies that the effects of hidden rotations are not present if the critical eigenvalues are imaginary. Generalization of these results to more complicated mode interactions is discussed.

Bifurcation problems in which periodic boundary conditions (PBC) or Neumann boundary conditions (NBC) are imposed often involve partial differential equations that have Euclidean symmetry. In this case posing the bifurcation problem with either PBC or NBC on a finite domain can lead to a symmetric bifurcation problem for which the manifest symmetries of the domain do not completely characterize the constraints due to symmetry on the bifurcation equations. Additional constraints due to the Euclidean symmetry of the equations can have a crucial influence on the structure of the bifurcation equations. An example is the bifurcation of standing waves on the surface of fluid layer. The Euclidean symmetry of an infinite fluid layer constrains the bifurcation of surface waves in a finite container with square cross section because the waves satisfying PBC or NBC can be shown to lie in certain finite-dimensional fixed point subspaces of the infinite-dimensional problem. These constraints are studied by analyzing the finite-dimensional vector fields obtained on these subspaces by restricting the bifurcation equations for the infinite layer. Particular emphasis is given to determining which bifurcations might reveal observable effects of the rotational symmetry of the infinite layer. It turns out that a necessary condition for this possibility to arise is that the subspace for PBC must carry a reducible representation of the normalizer subgroup acting on the subspace. This condition can be met in different ways in both codimension-one and codimension-two bifurcations.

Using coupled Ginzburg-Landau equations, the dynamics of hexagonal patterns with broken chiral symmetry are investigated, as they appear in rotating non-Boussinesq or surface-tension-driven convection. We find that close to the secondary Hopf bifurcation to oscillating hexagons the dynamics are well described by a single complex Ginzburg-Landau equation (CGLE) coupled to the phases of the hexagonal pattern. At the bandcenter these equations reduce to the usual CGLE and the system exhibits defect chaos. Away from the bandcenter a transition to a frozen vortex state is found.

A theory of the novel spiral chaos state recently observed in Rayleigh-Benard convection is proposed in terms of the importance of invasive defects i.e defects that through their intrinsic dynamics expand to take over the system. The motion of the spiral defects is shown to be dominated by wave vector frustration, rather than a rotational motion driven by a vertical vorticity field. This leads to a continuum of spiral frequencies, and a spiral may rotate in either sense depending on the wave vector of its local environment. Results of extensive numerical work on equations modelling the convection system provide some confirmation of these ideas.

Motivated by the idea of developing a ``hydrodynamic'' description of spatiotemporal chaos, we have investigated the defect--defect correlation functions in the defect turbulence regime of the two--dimensional, anisotropic complex Ginzburg--Landau equation. We compare our results with the predictions of generic scale invariance. Using the topological nature of the defects, we prove that defect--defect correlations cannot decay as slowly as predicted by generic scale invariance. We also present results on the fluctuations of the amplitude field A .