Transition from Spirals to Defect-Mediated Turbulence Driven by a Doppler Instability

Qi Ouyang; Harry L. Swinney; Ge Li

doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.84.1047

Transition from Spirals to Defect-Mediated Turbulence Driven by a Doppler Instability

Qi Ouyang, Harry L. Swinney, and Ge Li

Phys. Rev. Lett. 84, 1047 – Published 31 January 2000

Abstract

A transition from rotating chemical spirals to turbulence is observed in experiments on the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction. The transition occurs when the waves near the spiral tip spontaneously break, generating defects. Measurements reveal that this defect-mediated turbulence is caused by the Doppler effect on the traveling waves. The observations are in good accord with numerical simulations and theory.

Received 9 August 1999

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.84.1047

Authors & Affiliations

Qi Ouyang^1,*, Harry L. Swinney^2,†, and Ge Li²

¹Department of Physics, Mesoscopic Physics Laboratory, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China
²Center for Nonlinear Dynamics and Department of Physics, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas 78712

^*Electronic address: qi@mail.phy.pku.edu.cn
^†Electronic address: swinney@chaos.ph.utexas.edu