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Three-dimensional bouyancy-driven convection in a horizontal fluid layer with stress-free boundary conditions at the top and bottom and periodic boundary conditions in the horizontal directions is investigated by means of numerical simulation and bifurcation-analysis techniques. The aspect ratio is fixed to a value of 2√2 and the Prandtl number to a value of 6.8. Two-dimensional convection rolls are found to be stable up to a Rayleigh number of 17 950, where a Hopf bifurcation leads to traveling waves. These are stable up to a Rayleigh number of 30 000, where a secondary Hopf bifurcation generates modulated traveling waves. We pay particular attention to the symmetries of the solutions and symmetry breaking by the bifurcations.
The aim of this paper is to revisit the calculation of atom-surface quantum friction in the quantum field theory formulation put forward by Barton (2010 New J. Phys. 12 113045). We show that the power dissipated into field excitations and the associated friction force depend on how the atom is boosted from being initially at rest to a configuration in which it is moving at constant velocity (nu) parallel to the planar interface. In addition, we point out that there is a subtle cancellation between the one-photon and part of the two-photon dissipating power, resulting in a leading order contribution to the frictional power which goes as nu(4). These results are also confirmed by an alternative calculation of the average radiation force, which scales as nu(3).
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.