Abstract
We report on a study of asymmetric, traveling patterns which develop at a driven fluid-air interface in the experimental system known as the printer's instability. We find that the traveling pattern appears via a supercritical parity-breaking transition, at which the pattern loses its reflection symmetry and begins to drift with constant speed. From measurements of the degree of asymmetry of the drifting pattern as a function of the experimental control parameter, we find that the asymmetry increases with the square root of the control parameter, and that the drift velocity is linear in the asymmetry. This behavior is in accord with recent theoretical predictions. Our results do not agree, however, with the predictions of a model of the parity-breaking transition involving the coupling of spatial modes with wave numbers q and 2q.
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