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Updated: Jun 3, 2026

Evolution of Staircase Structures in Diffusive Convection
Published on: September 5, 2018
Coarsening to chaos-stabilized fronts
Ka-Fai Poon1, Ralf W Wittenberg
1Department of Mathematics, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada V5A 1S6.
Abstract:
We investigate a model for pattern formation in the presence of Galilean symmetry proposed by Matthews and Cox [Phys. Rev. E 62, R1473 (2000)], which has the form of coupled generalized Burgers- and Ginzburg-Landau-type equations. With only the system size L as a parameter, we find distinct "small-L" and "large-L" regimes exhibiting clear differences in their dynamics and scaling behavior. The long-time statistically stationary state contains a single L-dependent front, stabilized globally by spatiotemporally chaotic dynamics confined away from the front. For sufficiently large domains, the transient dynamics include a state consisting of several viscous shocklike structures that coarsens gradually, before collapsing to a single front when one front absorbs the others.
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