Quasiperiodic routes to chaos in confined two-dimensional differential convection

Chaotic wave dynamics in weakly magnetized spherical Couette flows

Direct numerical simulations of a liquid metal filling the gap between two concentric spheres are presented. The flow is governed by the interplay between the rotation of the inner sphere (measured by the Reynolds number Re) and a weak externally applied axial magnetic field (measured by the Hartmann number Ha). By varying the latter, a rich variety of flow features, both in terms of spatial symmetry and temporal dependence, is obtained. Flows with two or three independent frequencies describing their time evolution are found as a result of Hopf bifurcations. They are stable on a sufficiently large interval of Hartmann numbers where regions of multistability of two, three, and even four types of these different flows are detected. The temporal character of the solutions is analyzed by means of an accurate frequency analysis and Poincaré sections. An unstable branch of flows undergoing a period doubling cascade and frequency locking of three-frequency solutions is described as well.

Critical Point for Bifurcation Cascades and Featureless Turbulence

In this Letter we show that a bifurcation cascade and fully sustained turbulence can share the phase space of a fluid flow system, resulting in the presence of competing stable attractors. We analyze the toroidal pipe flow, which undergoes subcritical transition to turbulence at low pipe curvatures (pipe-to-torus diameter ratio) and supercritical transition at high curvatures, as was previously documented. We unveil an additional step in the bifurcation cascade and provide evidence that, in a narrow range of intermediate curvatures, its dynamics competes with that of sustained turbulence emerging through subcritical transition mechanisms.

Dragon-king-like extreme events in coupled bursting neurons

We present evidence of extreme events in two Hindmarsh-Rose (HR) bursting neurons mutually interacting via two different coupling configurations: chemical synaptic- and gap junctional-type diffusive coupling. A dragon-king-like probability distribution of the extreme events is seen for combinations of synaptic coupling where small- to medium-size events obey a power law and the larger events that cross an extreme limit are outliers. The extreme events originate due to instability in antiphase synchronization of the coupled systems via two different routes, intermittency and quasiperiodicity routes to complex dynamics for purely excitatory and inhibitory chemical synaptic coupling, respectively. For a mixed type of inhibitory and excitatory chemical synaptic interactions, the intermittency route to extreme events is only seen. Extreme events with our suggested distribution is also seen for gap junctional-type diffusive, but repulsive, coupling where the intermittency route to complexity is found. A simple electronic experiment using two diffusively coupled analog circuits of the HR neuron model, but interacting in a repulsive way, confirms occurrence of the dragon-king-like extreme events.

Periodic orbits in tall laterally heated rectangular cavities

This study elucidates the origin of the multiplicity of stable oscillatory flows detected by time integration in tall rectangular cavities heated from the side. By using continuation techniques for periodic orbits, it is shown that initially unstable branches, arising at Hopf bifurcations of the basic steady flow, become stable after crossing Neimark-Sacker points. There are no saddle-node or pitchfork bifurcations of periodic orbits, which could have been alternative mechanisms of stabilization. According to the symmetries of the system, the orbits are either fixed cycles, which retain at any time the center symmetry of the steady flow, or symmetric cycles involving a time shift in the global invariance of the orbit. The bifurcation points along the branches of periodic flows are determined. By using time integrations, with unstable periodic solutions as initial conditions, we determine which of the bifurcations at the limits of the intervals of stable periodic orbits are sub- or supercritical.