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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