Domain growth and coarsening inhibition in a nonpotential system

We present a study of interface dynamics in two spatial dimensions for a nonrelaxational system that describes the temporal evolution of three competing real fields. This and similar models have been used to obtain insight into problems such as Rayleigh–Bénard convection in a rotating cell or population competition dynamics in predator-key systems. A notable feature is that the nonpotential dynamics stops the coarsening process as long as the system size is large enough. For certain values of the parameters, the system switches to a chaotic dynamical state known as the Küppers–Lortz (KL) instability. When isotropic spatial derivatives are used, the intrinsic period of the KL instability diverges with time. On the contrary, anisotropic derivatives stabilize the KL period.  1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.