We study the modulational dynamics of striped patterns formed in the wake of a planar directional quench. Such quenches, which move across a medium and nucleate pattern-forming instabilities in their wake, have been shown in numerous applications to control and select the wavenumber and orientation of striped phases. In the context of the prototypical complex Ginzburg-Landau and Swift-Hohenberg equations, we use a multiple-scale analysis to derive a one-dimensional viscous Burgers' equation, which describes the long-wavelength modulational and defect dynamics in the direction transverse to the quenching motion, that is, along the quenching line.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF