The complex Ginzburg–Landau equation serves as a paradigm of pattern formation and the existence and stability properties of Ginzburg–Landau m-armed spiral waves have been investigated extensively. However, many multi-armed spiral waves are unstable and thereby rarely visible in experiments and numerical simulations. In this article we selectively stabilize certain significant classes of unstable spiral waves within circular and spherical geometries. As a result, stable spiral waves with an arbitrary number of arms are obtained for the first time. Our tool for stabilization is the symmetry-breaking control triple method, which is an equivariant generalization of the widely applied Pyragas control to the setting of PDEs.
Reaction–diffusion equations are ubiquitous in various scientific domains and their patterns represent a fascinating area of investigation. However, many of these patterns are unstable and, therefore, challenging to observe. To overcome this limitation, we present new noninvasive feedback controls based on symmetry groupoids. As a concrete example, we employ these controls to selectively stabilize unstable equilibria of the Chafee–Infante equation under Dirichlet boundary conditions on the interval. Unlike conventional reflection-based control schemes, our approach incorporates additional symmetries that enable us to design new convolution controls for stabilization. By demonstrating the efficacy of our method, we provide a new tool for investigating and controlling systems with unstable patterns, with potential implications for a wide range of scientific disciplines.
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