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We investigate numerically the appearance of heteroclinic behavior in a three-dimensional, buoyancy-driven fluid layer with stress-free top and bottom boundaries, a square horizontal periodicity with a small aspect ratio, and rotation at low to moderate rates about a vertical axis. The Prandtl number is 6.8. If the rotation is not too slow, the skewed-varicose instability leads from stationary rolls to a stationary mixed-mode solution, which in turn loses stability to a heteroclinic cycle formed by unstable roll states and connections between them. The unstable eigenvectors of these roll states are also of the skewed-varicose or mixed-mode type and in some parameter regions skewed-varicose like shearing oscillations as well as square patterns are involved in the cycle. Always present weak noise leads to irregular horizontal translations of the convection pattern and makes the dynamics chaotic, which is verified by calculating Lyapunov exponents. In the nonrotating case the primary rolls lose, depending on the aspect ratio, stability to traveling waves or a stationary square pattern. We also study the symmetries of the solutions at the intermittent fixed points in the heteroclinic cycle.
We study the dynamo properties of asymmetric square patterns in Boussinesq Rayleigh-B'enard convection in a plane horizontal layer. Cases without rotation and with weak rotation about a vertical axis are considered. There exist different types of solutions distinguished by their symmetry, among them such with flows possessing a net helicity and being capable of kinematic dynamo action in the presence as well as in the absence of rotation. In the nonrotating case these flows are, however, always only kinematic, not nonlinear dynamos. Nonlinearly the back-reaction of the magnetic field then forces the solution into the basin of attraction of a roll pattern incapable of dynamo action. But with rotation added parameter regions are found where the Coriolis force counteracts the Lorentz force in such a way that the asymmetric squares are also nonlinear dynamos.
We numerically investigate nonlinear asymmetric square patterns in a horizontal convection layer with up-down reflection symmetry. As a novel feature we find the patterns to appear via the skewed varicose instability of rolls. The time-independent nonlinear state is generated by two unstable checkerboard (symmetric square) patterns and their nonlinear interaction. As the bouyancy forces increase the interacting modes give rise to bifurcations leading to a periodic alternation between a nonequilateral hexagonal pattern and the square pattern or to different kinds of standing oscillations.
We investigate the dynamo effect in a flow configuration introduced by G. O. Roberts in 1972. Based on a clear energetic hierarchy of Fourier components on the steady-state dynamo branch, an approximate model of interacting modes is constructed covering all essential features of the complete system but allowing simulations with a minimum amount of computation time. We use this model to study the excitation mechanism of the dynamo, the transition from stationary to time-dependent dynamo solutions and the characteristic properties of the latter ones.
Motivated by the successful Karlsruhe dynamo experiment, a relatively low-dimensional dynamo model is proposed. It is based on a strong truncation of the magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) equations with an external forcing of the Roberts type and the requirement that the model system satisfies the symmetries of the full MHD system, so that the first symmetry-breaking bifurcations can be captured. The backbone of the Roberts dynamo is formed by the Roberts flow, a helical mean magnetic field and another part of the magnetic field coupled to these two by triadic mode interactions. A minimum truncation model (MTM) containing only these energetically dominating primary mode triads is fully equivalent to the widely used first-order smoothing approximation. However, it is shown that this approach works only in the limit of small wave numbers of the excited magnetic field or small magnetic Reynolds numbers ($Rm ll 1$). To obtain dynamo action under more general conditions, secondary mode