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Tricritical Phenomena in Rotating Couette-Taylor Flow

1985; American Physical Society; Volume: 54; Issue: 7 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1103/physrevlett.54.673

1092-0145

A. Aitta, Guenter Ahlers, David S. Cannell,

Theoretical and Computational Physics

We present measurements of the fluid velocity in a rotating Couette-Taylor system of aspect ratio $L$ near 1. At small angular speed $\ensuremath{\omega}$ of the inner cylinder, the system contains a symmetric vortex pair. As $\ensuremath{\omega}$ increases, the vortex boundary moves off center, and a suitably defined order parameter $\ensuremath{\psi}$ becomes nonzero. This bifurcation changes from forward to backward as $L$ is increased. Results for $\ensuremath{\psi}$ agree quantitatively with the predictions of a Landau model for tricritical behavior.