Nonlinear Waves and Pattern Dynamics

Book excerpt: This book addresses the fascinating phenomena associated with nonlinear waves and spatio-temporal patterns. These appear almost everywhere in nature from sand bed forms to brain patterns, and yet their understanding still presents fundamental scientific challenges. The reader will learn here, in particular, about the current state-of-the art and new results in: Nonlinear water waves: resonance, solitons, focusing, Bose-Einstein condensation, as well as and their relevance for the sea environment (sea-wind interaction, sand bed forms, fiber clustering) Pattern formation in non-equilibrium media: soap films, chimera patterns in oscillating media, viscoelastic Couette-Taylor flow, flow in the wake behind a heated cylinder, other pattern formation. The editors and authors dedicate this book to the memory of Alexander Ezersky, Professor of Fluid Mechanics at the University of Caen Normandie (France) from September 2007 to July 2016. Before 2007, he had served as a Senior Scientist at the Institute of Applied Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Nizhny Novgorod (Russia). The chapters have been written by leading scientists in Nonlinear Physics, and the topics chosen so as to cover all the fields to which Prof. Ezersky himself contributed, by means of experimental, theoretical and numerical approaches. The volume will appeal to advanced students and researchers studying nonlinear waves and pattern dynamics, as well as other scientists interested in their applications in various natural media.