Convection patterns. Courtesy of Mike Schatz.
Rayleigh-Bénard convection is a fluid flow caused by a non-uniform temperature distribution in a fluid imposed by heating the bottom of a cell. Such flows result in the development of the convective instability, if the static vertical temperature gradient is large enough.
We are interested in the dynamic of the flow at onset of the Spiral-Defect Chaos. We are developing topological tools and computer software for analyzing the attractor. Currently we are focusing on identifying periodic orbits and connections between them.
Our latest efforts aim at quantitative comparison of the dynamics observed in experiments and simulation.