Defect turbulence in inclined layer convection

Phys Rev Lett. 2002 Jan 21;88(3):034501. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.88.034501. Epub 2002 Jan 7.

Abstract

We report experimental results on the defect turbulent state of undulation chaos in inclined layer convection of a fluid with Prandtl number approximately 1. By measuring defect density and undulation wave number, we find that the onset of undulation chaos coincides with the theoretically predicted onset for stable, stationary undulations. At stronger driving, we observe a competition between ordered undulations and undulation chaos, suggesting bistability between a fixed-point attractor and spatiotemporal chaos. In the defect turbulent regime, we measured the defect creation, annihilation, entering, leaving, and rates. We derive a universal probability distribution function which agrees with the experimental findings.