Analysis of the shearing instability in nonlinear convection and magnetoconvection

Numerical experiments on two-dimensional convection with or without a vertical magnetic field reveal a bewildering variety of periodic and aperiodic oscillations. Steady rolls can develop a shearing instability, in which rolls turning over in one direction grow at the expense of rolls turning over in the other, resulting in a net shear across the layer. As the temperature difference across the fluid is increased, two-dimensional pulsating waves occur, in which the direction of shear alternates. We analyse the nonlinear dynamics of this behaviour by first constructing appropriate low-order sets of ordinary differential equations, which show the same behaviour, and then analysing the global bifurcations that lead to these oscillations by constructing one-dimensional return maps. We compare the behaviour of the partial differential equations, the models and the maps in systematic two-parameter studies of both the magnetic and the non-magnetic cases, emphasising how the symmetries of periodic solutions change as a result of global bifurcations. Much of the interesting behaviour is associated with a discontinuous change in the leading direction of a fixed point at a global bifurcation; this change occurs when the magnetic field is introduced

Equation-Free Analysis of Macroscopic Behavior in Traffic and Pedestrian Flow

Equation-free methods make possible an analysis of the evolution of a few coarse-grained or macroscopic quantities for a detailed and realistic model with a large number of fine-grained or microscopic variables, even though no equations are explicitly given on the macroscopic level. This will facilitate a study of how the model behavior depends on parameter values including an understanding of transitions between different types of qualitative behavior. These methods are introduced and explained for traffic jam formation and emergence of oscillatory pedestrian counter flow in a corridor with a narrow door

Traveling waves and pattern formation for spatially discrete bistable reaction-diffusion equations (survey)

Analysis and Stochastic