Proceedings of the 3rd Workshop on Instabilities and Nonequilibrium Structures

We present here a selection of the seminars given at the Second International Workshop on Instabilities and Nonequilibrium Structures in Valparaiso, Chile, in December 1987. The Workshop was organized by Facultad de Ciencias Fisicas y Matematicas of Universidad de Chile and by Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Maria where it took place. This periodic meeting takes place every two years in Chile and aims to contribute to the efforts of Latin America towards the development of scientific research. This development is certainly a necessary condition for progress in our countries and we thank our lecturers for their warm collaboration to fulfill this need. We are also very much indebted to the Chilean Academy of Sciences for sponsoring officially this Workshop. We thank also our sponsors and supporters for their valuable help, and most especially the Scientific Cooperation Program of France, UNESCO, Ministerio de Educaci6n of Chile and Fundaci6n Andes. We are grateful to Professor Michiel Hazewinkel for including this book in his series and to Dr. David Larner of Kluwer for his continuous interest and support to this project.

We have classified the articles presented here in two Sections according to their general content. In Part I we have included papers which deal with statistical mechanics, math ematical aspects of dynamical systems and sthochastic effects in nonequilibrium systems. Part II is devoted mainly to instabilities and self-organization in extended nonequilibrium systems. The study of partial differential equations by numerical and analytic methods plays a great role here and many works are related to this subject. Most recent developments in this fascinating and rapidly growing area are discussed. PART I STATISTICAL MECHANICS AND RELATED TOPICS NONEQUILIBRIUM POTENTIALS FOR PERIOD DOUBLING R. Graham and A. Hamm Fachbereich Physik, Universitiit Gesamthochschule Essen D4300 Essen 1 Germany ABSTRACT. In this lecture we consider the influence of weak stochastic perturbations on period doubling using nonequilibrium potentials, a concept which is explained in section 1 and formulated for the case of maps in section 2. In section 3 nonequilibrium potentials are considered for the family of quadratic maps (a) at the Feigenbaum 'attractor' with Gaussian noise, (b) for more general non Gaussian noise, and (c) for the case of a strange repeller. Our discussion will be informal. A more detailed account of this and related material can be found in our papers [1-3] and in the reviews [4, 5], where further references to related work are also given. 1.

This volume contains a selection of the lectures given at the Fifth International Workshop on Instabilities and Nonequilibrium Structures, held in Santiago, Chile, in December 1993. The following general subjects are covered: instabilities and pattern formation, stochastic effects in nonlinear systems, nonequilibrium statistical mechanics and granular matter. Review articles on transitions between spatio-temporal patterns and nonlinear wave equations are also included. Audience: This book should appeal to physicists and mathematicians working in the areas of nonequilibrium systems, dynamical systems, pattern formation and partial differential equations. Chemists and biologists interested in self-organization and statistical mechanics should also be interested, as well as engineers working in fluid mechanics and materials science.

Approach your problems from the right end It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is and begin with the answers. Then one day, that they can't see the problem. perbaps you will find the final question. G. K. Chesterton. The Scandal of Father 'The Hermit Clad in Crane Feathers' in R. Brown 'The point of a Pin'. van GuIik's The Chinese Maze Murders. Growing specialization and diversification have brought a host of monographs and textbooks on increasingly specialized topics. However, the "tree" of knowledge of mathematics and related fields does not grow only by putting forth new branches. It also happens, quite often in fact, that branches which were thought to be completely disparate are suddenly seen to be related. Further, the kind and level of sophistication of mathematics applied in various sciences has changed drastically in recent years: measure theory is used (non-trivially) in regional and theoretical economics; algebraic geometry interacts with physics; the Minkowsky lemma, coding theory and the structure of water meet one another in packing and covering theory; quantum fields, crystal defects and mathematical programming profit from homotopy theory; Lie algebras are relevant to filtering; and prediction and electrical engineering can use Stein spaces. And in addition to this there are such new emerging subdisciplines as "experimental mathematics", "CFD", "completely integrable systems", "chaos, synergetics and large-scale order", which are almost impossible to fit into the existing classification schemes. They draw upon widely different sections of mathematics.

This book contains two introductory papers on important topics of nonlinear physics. The first one, by M. San Miguel et al., refers to the effect of noise in nonequilibrium systems. The second, by M.E. Brachet, is a modern introduction to turbulence in fluids. The material can be very useful for short courses and is presented accordingly. The authors have made their texts self-contained. The volume also contains a selection of the invited seminars given at the Sixth International Workshop on Instabilities and Nonequilibrium Structures. Audience: This book should be of interest to graduate students and scientists interested in the fascinating problems of nonlinear physics.

Spatio-temporal patterns appear almost everywhere in nature, and their description and understanding still raise important and basic questions. However, if one looks back 20 or 30 years, definite progress has been made in the modeling of insta bilities, analysis of the dynamics in their vicinity, pattern formation and stability, quantitative experimental and numerical analysis of patterns, and so on. Universal behaviors of complex systems close to instabilities have been determined, leading to the wide interdisciplinarity of a field that is now referred to as nonlinear science or science of complexity, and in which initial concepts of dissipative structures or synergetics are deeply rooted. In pioneering domains related to hydrodynamics or chemical instabilities, the interactions between experimentalists and theoreticians, sometimes on a daily basis, have been a key to progress. Everyone in the field praises the role played by the interactions and permanent feedbacks between ex perimental, numerical, and analytical studies in the achievements obtained during these years. Many aspects of convective patterns in normal fluids, binary mixtures or liquid crystals are now understood and described in this framework. The generic pres ence of defects in extended systems is now well established and has induced new developments in the physics of laser with large Fresnel numbers. Last but not least, almost 40 years after his celebrated paper, Turing structures have finally been ob tained in real-life chemical reactors, triggering anew intense activity in the field of reaction-diffusion systems.

The contents of this book correspond to Sessions VII and VIII of the International Workshop on Instabilities and Nonequilibrium Structures which took place in Vina del Mar, Chile, in December 1997 and December 1999, respectively. Part I is devoted to self-contained courses. Three courses are related to new developments in Bose-Einstein condensation: the first one by Robert Graham studies the classical dynamics of excitations of Bose condensates in anisotropic traps, the second by Marc Etienne Brachet refers to the bifurcations arising in attractive Bose-Einstein condensates and superfluid helium and the third course by Andre Verbeure is a pedagogical introduction to the subject with special emphasis on first principles and rigorous results. Part I is completed by two courses given by Michel Moreau: the first one on diffusion limited reactions of particles with fluctuating activity and the second on the phase boundary dynamics in a one dimensional nonequilibrium lattice gas. Part II includes a selection of invited seminars at both Workshops.

There are two subjects in this thesis. In the first part, a qualitative method to classify and predict the structure of defects in reaction-diffusion systems is introduced. This qualitative approach makes it easier to analyze the behavior of defects in complex systems. It also gives us information about the inner structure of the defect, and from that point of view, it makes it possible to approach the concept of defect bifurcation in a novel manner. In the second part, we study the normal form governing the evolution of a spatially extended homogeneous temporal instability, in the presence of a temporal forcing. This is equivalent to studying strong resonances of a field of nonlinear oscillators. A detailed analysis of the phase space of this normal form reveals a rich dynamical structure, which gives rise to a variety of spatial structures. These include excitable pulses, excitable spirals, fronts and spatially periodic structures. These structures are studied and their possible bifurcations are analyzed from a qualitative point of view.