Experimental Evidence for Three Universality Classes for Reaction Fronts in Disordered Flows

Self-sustained reaction fronts in a disordered medium subject to an external flow display self-affine roughening, pinning, and depinning transitions. We measure spatial and temporal fluctuations of the front in 1+1 dimensions, controlled by a single parameter, the mean flow velocity. Three distinct...

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Published inPhysical review letters Vol. 114; no. 23; p. 234502
Main Authors Atis, Séverine, Dubey, Awadhesh Kumar, Salin, Dominique, Talon, Laurent, Le Doussal, Pierre, Wiese, Kay Jörg
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States 11.06.2015
Subjects
Diffusion
Liquid Crystals
Models, Theoretical
Nonlinear Dynamics
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Summary:Self-sustained reaction fronts in a disordered medium subject to an external flow display self-affine roughening, pinning, and depinning transitions. We measure spatial and temporal fluctuations of the front in 1+1 dimensions, controlled by a single parameter, the mean flow velocity. Three distinct universality classes are observed, consistent with the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang (KPZ) class for fast advancing or receding fronts, the quenched KPZ class (positive-qKPZ) when the mean flow approximately cancels the reaction rate, and the negative-qKPZ class for slowly receding fronts. Both qKPZ classes exhibit distinct depinning transitions, in agreement with the theory.
ISSN:1079-7114
DOI:10.1103/physrevlett.114.234502