Resonance, symmetry, and bifurcation of periodic orbits in perturbed Rayleigh–Bénard convection

Abstract

This paper investigates the global structures of periodic orbits that appear in Rayleigh–Bénard convection, which is modelled by a two-dimensional perturbed Hamiltonian model, by focusing upon resonance, symmetry and bifurcation of the periodic orbits. First, we show the global structures of periodic orbits in the extended phase space by numerically detecting the associated periodic points on the Poincaré section. Then, we illustrate how resonant periodic orbits appear and specifically clarify that there exist some symmetric properties of such resonant periodic orbits which are projected on the phase space; namely, the period m and the winding number n become odd when an m-periodic orbit is symmetric with respect to the horizontal and vertical centre lines of a cell. Furthermore, the global structures of bifurcations of periodic orbits are depicted when the amplitude ɛ of the perturbation is varied, since in experiments the amplitude of the oscillation of the convection gradually increases when the Rayleigh number is raised.