Stable and unstable pulses of traveling-wave convection

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Abstract
Recent experiments on one-dimensional convection in binary fluids at moderate negative values of the separation ratio ψ have revealed the existence of a spatially localized ‘‘stationary pulse’’ of traveling waves whose spatial shape and length are fixed. In a long system, this pulse is destroyed slightly above onset by convectively amplified fluctuations. In a short system, however, these fluctuations are suppressed, allowing the observation of the unstable extension of the pulse state. Unlike the stationary pulse, this ‘‘unstable pulse’’ can have any length.