Self-organized dynamics on a curved growth interface.
We experimentally address long-time dynamics of an artificially curved growth interface in directional solidification. Repetitive cell nucleations are found to appear in a disordered way, but to eventually organize themselves in a coherent way, for long times. This behavior is recovered by simulation of a nonlinear advection-diffusion model for phase dynamics. The existence of a periodic attractor is supported by the derivation of a Lyapunov functional for this model.
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