Coiling and Supercoiling of Vortex Filaments in Oscillatory Media

Guillaume Rousseau; Hugues Chaté; Raymond Kapral

doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.80.5671

Coiling and Supercoiling of Vortex Filaments in Oscillatory Media

Guillaume Rousseau, Hugues Chaté, and Raymond Kapral

Phys. Rev. Lett. 80, 5671 – Published 22 June 1998

Abstract

We study the behavior of vortex filaments subject to a uniform density of phase twist in oscillatory media described by the complex Ginzburg-Landau equation. The first instability is a supercritical Hopf bifurcation to stable propagating helical vortices. The secondary instability, also a forward Hopf bifurcation, leads to quasiperiodic supercoiled filaments. The structural changes undergone by these dynamical objects are akin to those of twisted elastic rods.

Received 8 January 1998

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.80.5671

Authors & Affiliations

Guillaume Rousseau^1,2, Hugues Chaté¹, and Raymond Kapral³

¹CEA—Service de Physique de l'Etat Condensé, Centre d'Etudes de Saclay, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, France
²DAEC—Observatoire de Meudon, 5, place Jules Janssen, 92195 Meudon, France
³Chemical Physics Theory Group, Department of Chemistry, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario M5S 3H6, Canada