Slow passage through the Busse balloon -- predicting steps on the Eckhaus staircase (Q6989133)

In this article, the purpose is to understand the evolution of patterns in and beyond the Busse balloon as system parameters vary slowly. One expects that the pattern will vary continuously, slightly adjusting the amplitude and shape of vegetation patches, until it reaches the boundary of the Busse balloon, at which point the pattern becomes unstable in the system with frozen parameters.\N\NThe authors' main goal is to answer the following question: ``Given an initial periodic pattern with small fluctuations, can we predict the evolution of the number of patches as parameters vary slowly? In particular, can we predict the time at which the number of patches will change, and how much it will drop by?''\N\NTo achieve this purpose, the authors discuss the dynamic instabilities in an idealised Ginzburg-Landau model given by\N\[\NA_{t}=A_{xx} +\mu(\epsilon t) A - A |A|^{2}, \;\; A=A(x, t) \in \mathbb{C}, \quad x\in \mathbb{R}, \quad t>0.\N\]\NThey define a new variable \(B\) through \(A(x, t)=e^{ijx} B(x, t)\). To find \(B\), they solve the conjugated equation\N\[\NB_{t}=(\partial_{x}+ij)^{2}B +\mu(\epsilon t)B - B |B|^{2},\N\]\Nwith periodic boundary conditions \(B(2\pi, t)=B(0, t)\), \(B_{x}(2\pi, t)=B_{x}(0, t)\).\N\NThe authors' main results predict time instances of sudden drops in wave number and the resulting target states. The changes in wave number correspond to the annihilation of individual vegetation patches when resources are scarce and cannot support the original number of patches. Drops happen well after the primary pattern has destabilised at the Eckhaus boundary, and the key to distinguishing between the disappearance of one, two, or more patches during the drop are complex spatio-temporal resonances in the linearisation at the unstable pattern.\N\NThey support their results with numerical simulations and expect them to be conceptually applicable universally near the Eckhaus boundary. To understand the evolution of periodic patterns in the dynamic problem, the authors are interested not only in stability boundaries in the static problem but also in connecting orbits. Moreover, they consider a hypothesis which is sometimes colloquially referred to as node conservation or linear mode selection. Based on the understanding of the static problem associated with this hypothesis, the authors turn to predictions for the dynamic problem\N\[\NB_{t}=(\partial_{x}+ij)^{2}B +\mu B - B |B|^{2}, \quad \dot{\mu}=-\epsilon.\N\]\N\NTheir setting relates to the global aspect of the delay of instability in pitchfork bifurcations. In fact, the Eckhaus instability, which generically describes the boundary of the Busse balloon near a Turing bifurcation, manifests itself in bounded domains as a subcritical pitchfork bifurcation. Based on this analogy, the authors predict delays of order one in the parameter before leaving a fixed pattern. A simple linear calculation indeed correctly predicts the take-off point through an integral criterion: take-off points are found by requiring that the average of the marginally stable eigenvalue along part of the branch followed by the solution is zero. Finally, the authors conclude their theoretical and numerical results with a detailed discussion.