An amplitude equation for the conserved-Hopf bifurcation -- derivation, analysis and assessment

TL;DR

This paper derives and analyzes an amplitude equation for conserved-Hopf bifurcation, extending weakly nonlinear theory to systems with conservation laws, and validates it against full models with analytical and numerical results.

Contribution

It introduces a novel amplitude equation for conserved-Hopf bifurcation, including complex coefficients, and demonstrates its accuracy through comparison with full models.

Findings

The amplitude equation accurately predicts bifurcation diagrams.

Suppression of coarsening is universal in oscillatory phase separation.

The derived equation matches transient dynamics leading to traveling waves.

Abstract

We employ weakly nonlinear theory to derive an amplitude equation for the conserved-Hopf instability, i.e., a generic large-scale oscillatory instability for systems with two conservation laws. The resulting equation represents in the conserved case the equivalent of the complex Ginzburg-Landau equation obtained in the nonconserved case as amplitude equation for the standard Hopf bifurcation.Considering first the case of a relatively simple symmetric Cahn-Hilliard model with purely nonreciprocal coupling, we derive the nonlinear nonlocal amplitude equation with real coefficients and show that its bifurcation diagram and time evolution well agree with results for the full model. The solutions of the amplitude equation and their stability are analytically obtained thereby showing that in oscillatory phase separation the suppression of coarsening is universal. Second, we lift the two restrictions and obtain the amplitude equation in the generic case that has complex coefficients, that also shows very good agreement with the full model as exemplified for some transient dynamics that converges to traveling wave states.