Domain growth and coarsening inhibition in a nonpotential system

We present a study of interface dynamics in two spatial dimensions for a no nrelaxational system that describes the temporal evolution of three competi ng real fields. This and similar models have been used to obtain insight in to problems such as Rayleigh-Benard convection in a rotating cell or popula tion competition dynamics in predator-key systems. A notable feature is tha t the nonpotential dynamics stops the coarsening process as long as the sys tem size is large enough. For certain values of the parameters, the system switches to a chaotic dynamical state known as the Kuppers-Lortz (KL) insta bility. When isotropic spatial derivatives are used, the intrinsic period o f the KL instability diverges with time. On the contrary, anisotropic deriv atives stabilize the KL period. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights r eserved.