A comprehensive review of spatiotemporal pattern formation in systems driven away from equilibrium is presented, with emphasis on comparisons between theory and quantitative experiments. Examples include patterns in hydrodynamic systems such as thermal convection in pure fluids and binary mixtures, Taylor-Couette flow, parametric-wave instabilities, as well as patterns in solidification fronts, nonlinear optics, oscillatory chemical reactions and excitable biological media. The theoretical starting point is usually a set of deterministic equations of motion, typically in the form of nonlinear partial differential equations. These are sometimes supplemented by stochastic terms representing thermal or instrumental noise, but for macroscopic systems and carefully designed experiments the stochastic forces are often negligible. An aim of theory is to describe solutions of the deterministic equations that are likely to be reached starting from typical initial conditions and to persist at long times. A unified description is developed, based on the linear instabilities of a homogeneous state, which leads naturally to a classification of patterns in terms of the characteristic wave vector q0 and frequency ω0 of the instability. Type Is systems (ω0=0, q0≠0) are stationary in time and periodic in space; type IIIo systems (ω0≠0, q0=0) are periodic in time and uniform in space; and type Io systems (ω0≠0, q0≠0) are periodic in both space and time. Near a continuous (or supercritical) instability, the dynamics may be accurately described via "amplitude equations," whose form is universal for each type of instability. The specifics of each system enter only through the nonuniversal coefficients. Far from the instability threshold a different universal description known as the "phase equation" may be derived, but it is restricted to slow distortions of an ideal pattern. For many systems appropriate starting equations are either not known or too complicated to analyze conveniently. It is thus useful to introduce phenomenological order-parameter models, which lead to the correct amplitude equations near threshold, and which may be solved analytically or numerically in the nonlinear regime away from the instability. The above theoretical methods are useful in analyzing "real pattern effects" such as the influence of external boundaries, or the formation and dynamics of defects in ideal structures. An important element in nonequilibrium systems is the appearance of deterministic chaos. A greal deal is known about systems with a small number of degrees of freedom displaying "temporal chaos," where the structure of the phase space can be analyzed in detail. For spatially extended systems with many degrees of freedom, on the other hand, one is dealing with spatiotemporal chaos and appropriate methods of analysis need to be developed. In addition to the general features of nonequilibrium pattern formation discussed above, detailed reviews of theoretical and experimental work on many specific systems are presented. These include Rayleigh-Benard convection in a pure fluid, convection in binary-fluid mixtures, electrohydrodynamic convection in nematic liquid crystals, Taylor-Couette flow between rotating cylinders, parametric surface waves, patterns in certain open flow systems, oscillatory chemical reactions, static and dynamic patterns in biological media, crystallization fronts, and patterns in nonlinear optics. A concluding section summarizes what has and has not been accomplished, and attempts to assess the prospects for the future.

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Pattern formation outside of equilibrium

When the probability of measuring a particular value of some quantity varies inversely as a power of that value, the quantity is said to follow a power law, also known variously as Zipf's law or the Pareto distribution. Power laws appear widely in physics, biology, earth and planetary sciences, economics and finance, computer science, demography and the social sciences. For instance, the distributions of the sizes of cities, earthquakes, forest fires, solar flares, moon craters and people's personal fortunes all appear to follow power laws. The origin of power-law behaviour has been a topic of debate in the scientific community for more than a century. Here we review some of the empirical evidence for the existence of power-law forms and the theories proposed to explain them.

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Power laws, Pareto distributions and Zipf's law

1980 Preface * 1999 Preface * 1999 Acknowledgements * Introduction * 1 Circular Logic * 2 Phase Singularities (Screwy Results of Circular Logic) * 3 The Rules of the Ring * 4 Ring Populations * 5 Getting Off the Ring * 6 Attracting Cycles and Isochrons * 7 Measuring the Trajectories of a Circadian Clock * 8 Populations of Attractor Cycle Oscillators * 9 Excitable Kinetics and Excitable Media * 10 The Varieties of Phaseless Experience: In Which the Geometrical Orderliness of Rhythmic Organization Breaks Down in Diverse Ways * 11 The Firefly Machine 12 Energy Metabolism in Cells * 13 The Malonic Acid Reagent ('Sodium Geometrate') * 14 Electrical Rhythmicity and Excitability in Cell Membranes * 15 The Aggregation of Slime Mold Amoebae * 16 Numerical Organizing Centers * 17 Electrical Singular Filaments in the Heart Wall * 18 Pattern Formation in the Fungi * 19 Circadian Rhythms in General * 20 The Circadian Clocks of Insect Eclosion * 21 The Flower of Kalanchoe * 22 The Cell Mitotic Cycle * 23 The Female Cycle * References * Index of Names * Index of Subjects

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/596B270197FE27DE5FABB598B6210622/S0025557200150892a.pdf/div-class-title-span-class-italic-the-geometry-of-biological-time-span-by-a-t-winfree-pp-544-dm68-corrected-second-printing-1990-isbn-3-540-52528-9-springer-div.pdf

The geometry of biological time , by A. T. Winfree. Pp 544. DM68. Corrected Second Printing 1990. ISBN 3-540-52528-9 (Springer)

A simple model for synchronous firing of biological oscillators based on Peskin's model of the cardiac pacemaker (Mathematical aspects of heart physiology, Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University, New York, 1975, pp. 268-278) is studied. The model consists of a population of identical integrate-and-fire oscillators. The coupling between oscillators is pulsatile: when a given oscillator fires, it pulls the others up by a fixed amount, or brings them to the firing threshold, whichever is less. The main result is that for almost all initial conditions, the population evolves to a state in which all the oscillators are firing synchronously. The relationship between the model and real communities of biological oscillators is discussed; examples include populations of synchronously flashing fireflies, crickets that chirp in unison, electrically synchronous pacemaker cells, and groups of women whose menstrual cycles become mutually synchronized.

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Synchronization of pulse-coupled biological oscillators

Lattice-gas cellular automata (LGCA) and lattice Boltzmann models (LBM) are relatively new andpromising methods for the numerical solution of nonlinear partial differential equations. The bookprovides an introduction for graduate students and researchers. Working knowledge of calculus isrequired and experience in PDEs and fluid dynamics is recommended. Some peculiarities of cellularautomata are outlined in Chapter 2. The properties of various LGCA and special coding techniquesare discussed in Chapter 3. Concepts from statistical mechanics (Chapter 4) provide the necessarytheoretical background for LGCA and LBM. The properties of lattice Boltzmann models and amethod for their construction are presented in Chapter 5.

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Lattice-Gas Cellular Automata and Lattice Boltzmann Models

Mean-field exponents for self-organized critical phenomena.

We present an experiment on the propagation front of a flameless fire on a thin piece of paper. We find that fire fronts on a piece of paper follow quite well self-affine scaling statistics, with the roughening exponent χ around 0.70, well above the value 1 2 in the theoretical interface growth model using Gaussian noise. This discrepancy may be due to an anomalously singular behavior of the noise distribution, consistent with some recent studies.

Modeling forest fire by a paper-burning experiment, a realization of the interface growth mechanism

The question of saturation of self-organized criticality in the ``game of Life'' is analyzed through finite-size scaling. We have carried out connection-machine simulations for lattices up to 1024\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}1024. In that range we find no evidence of saturation. We do, however, find finite-size exponents that seem inconsistent with a single length-scale picture at criticality.

Self-organized criticality in the ‘‘game of Life’’

We propose a Ginzburg-Landau-type model to describe the kinetics of mixtures undergoing a sol-gel transition (nonconserved order parameter) simultaneously with phase separation (conserved order parameter). We compute the temporal development of the structure factor and determine the wave vector ${\mathit{q}}_{\mathrm{max}}$ at which the structure factor is maximal. We find that after a certain time ${\mathit{t}}_{\mathit{f}}$, ${\mathit{q}}_{\mathrm{max}}$ saturates at a final value ${\mathit{q}}_{\mathit{f}}$, and we calculate the temperature dependence of both ${\mathit{t}}_{\mathit{f}}$ and ${\mathit{q}}_{\mathit{f}}$. The predictions of this zeroth-order model agree remarkably well with recent kinetic measurements in gelatin-water-methanol mixtures.

Interference of phase separation and gelation: A zeroth-order kinetic model

We present analytical and numerical results that explain the transient turbulent dynamics observed in the complex Ginzburg-Landau equation. Just below the transition to turbulence, we observe that metastable turbulent states break down by the nucleation and growth of single-vortex droplets, leading to a 'frozen' state with a low (but finite) density of stationary vortices. We derive the relation between nucleation time and radius, and determine their dependence on the distance to the turbulence transition line.

Preben Alstrøm

Papers

Mean-field exponents for self-organized critical phenomena.

Modeling forest fire by a paper-burning experiment, a realization of the interface growth mechanism

Self-organized criticality in the ‘‘game of Life’’

Interference of phase separation and gelation: A zeroth-order kinetic model

Nucleation and transients at the onset of vortex turbulence.