Parity breaking in eutectic growth

Using the boundary-integral formulation, we show that the fully isotropic model of eutectic growth in directional solidification supports solutions with a broken parity symmetry. These correspond to the tilted ‘‘waves’’ observed recently by Faivre et al. Our results are in good agreement with these experiments. For a fixed wavelength λ, we predict a collapse to zero of the tilt angle φ at a critical velocity V=${\mathit{V}}_{\mathit{c}}$ which scales as ${\mathit{V}}_{\mathit{c}}$∼${\lambda }^{\mathrm{-}2}$. For not too small V, we find that φ≃const along the line ${\lambda }^2$V=const. We make predictions which call for new experimental investigations.