Helices in the wake of precipitation fronts

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.

7 pages, 3 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev. E

References in corpus (3)

• Formation of regular structures in the process of phase separation
• Designer Patterns: Flexible Control of Precipitation through Electric Currents
• Front propagation into unstable metal nanowires

Cited by in corpus (3)

• Ternary eutectic dendrites: Pattern formation and scaling properties
• Hopf bifurcation from fronts in the Cahn-Hilliard equation
• Phase separation patterns from directional quenching