Piston-effect-induced thermal oscillations at the Rayleigh-Bénard threshold in supercritical 3He.

We perform a Navier-Stokes numerical simulation of the transient Rayleigh-Bénard convection onset in nearly supercritical 3He in the exact conditions in experiments performed by Kogan, Murphy, and Meyer [Phys. Rev. Lett. 82, 4635 (1999)]Phys. Rev. E 63, 056310 (2001)]]. We find an interpretation of the observed unexpected temperature oscillations at the convection onset in terms of the piston effect. This is our first result towards the exploration of the whole instability diagram as recently mapped in those experiments.