Defect-Mediated Stability:

An Effective Hydrodynamic Theory of Spatiotemporal Chaos


C. C. Chow and T. Hwa.



Abstract

      Spatiotemporal chaos (STC) exhibited by the Kuramoto-Sivashinsky (KS) equation is investigated analytically and numerically. An effective stochastic equation belonging to the KPZ universality class is constructed by incor- porating the chaotic dynamics of the small KS system in a coarse-graining procedure. The bare parameters of the effective theory are computed ap- proximately. Stability of the system is shown to be mediated by space-time defects that are accompanied by stochasticity. The method of analysis and the mechanism of stability may be relevant to a class of STC problems.


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