title: Excitation of spirals and chiral symmetry breaking in rayleigh-benard convection.
abstract: Spiral-defect populations in low-Prandtl number Rayleigh-Bénard convection with slow rotation about a vertical axis were measured in carbon dioxide at high pressure. The results indicate that spirals act like "thermally excited" defects and that the winding direction of a spiral is analogous to a magnetic spin. Rotation about a vertical axis, the spiral analog of the magnetic field, breaks the zero-rotation chiral symmetry between clockwise and counterclockwise spiral defects. Many properties of spiral-defect statistics are well described by an effective statistical-mechanical model.
authors.forename: R E
authors.initials: RE
authors.lastname: Ecke
authors.forename: Y
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Hu
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Mainieri
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Ahlers