Helices in the wake of precipitation fronts
Statistical Mechanics
2015-06-17 v1 Soft Condensed Matter
Abstract
A theoretical study of the emergence of helices in the wake of precipitation fronts is presented. The precipitation dynamics is described by the Cahn-Hilliard equation and the fronts are obtained by quenching the system into a linearly unstable state. Confining the process onto the surface of a cylinder and using the pulled-front formalism, our analytical calculations show that there are front solutions that propagate into the unstable state and leave behind a helical structure. We find that helical patterns emerge only if the radius of the cylinder R is larger than a critical value R>R_c, in agreement with recent experiments.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1308.6786,
title = {Helices in the wake of precipitation fronts},
author = {Shibi Thomas and Istvan Lagzi and Ferenc Molnar and Zoltan Racz},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1308.6786},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
7 pages, 3 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev. E