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Phys. Rev. E 80, 036202 (2009) [5 pages]

Swift-Hohenberg equation with broken reflection symmetry

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J. Burke1,*, S. M. Houghton2,†, and E. Knobloch3,‡
1Center for BioDynamics, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts 02215, USA
2School of Mathematics, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, United Kingdom
3Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA

Received 7 May 2009; published 11 September 2009

The bistable Swift-Hohenberg equation possesses a variety of time-independent spatially localized solutions organized in the so-called snakes-and-ladders structure. This structure is a consequence of a phenomenon known as homoclinic snaking, and is in turn a consequence of spatial reversibility of the equation. We examine here the consequences of breaking spatial reversibility on the snakes-and-ladders structure. We find that the localized states now drift, and show that the snakes-and-ladders structure breaks up into a stack of isolas. We explore the evolution of this new structure with increasing reversibility breaking and study the dynamics of the system outside of the snaking region using a combination of numerical and analytical techniques.

© 2009 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevE.80.036202
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevE.80.036202
PACS:
47.54.−r, 47.20.Ky

*jb@math.bu.edu

smh@maths.leeds.ac.uk

knobloch@berkeley.edu