Mechanisms of extensive spatiotemporal chaos in Rayleigh-Bénard convection
Spatially extended dynamical systems exhibit complex behaviour in both space and time-spatiotemporal chaos. Analysis of dynamical quantities (such as fractal dimensions and Lyapunov exponents) has provided insights into low-dimensional systems; but it has proven more difficult to understand spatiote...
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Published in | Nature (London) Vol. 404; no. 6779; pp. 733 - 736 |
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Main Authors | , , , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
London
Nature Publishing
13.04.2000
Nature Publishing Group |
Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | Spatially extended dynamical systems exhibit complex behaviour in both
space and time-spatiotemporal chaos. Analysis of dynamical
quantities (such as fractal dimensions and Lyapunov exponents)
has provided insights into low-dimensional systems; but it has proven more
difficult to understand spatiotemporal chaos in high-dimensional systems,
despite abundant data describing its statistical properties.
Initial attempts have been made to extend the dynamical approach to higher-dimensional
systems, demonstrating numerically that the spatiotemporal chaos in several
simple models is extensive (the number of dynamical degrees
of freedom scales with the system volume). Here we report a computational
investigation of a phenomenon found in nature, 'spiral defect'
chaos in Rayleigh-Bénard convection, in which
we find that the spatiotemporal chaos in this state is extensive and characterized
by about a hundred dynamical degrees of freedom. By studying the detailed
space-time evolution of the dynamical degrees of freedom, we find that
the mechanism for the generation of chaotic disorder is spatially and temporally
localized to events associated with the creation and annihilation of defects. |
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Bibliography: | ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 ObjectType-Article-2 ObjectType-Feature-1 |
ISSN: | 0028-0836 1476-4687 |
DOI: | 10.1038/35008013 |