Dynamics of spatio-temporal defects in the Couette-Taylor flow: Comparison of experimental and theoretical results

Recent experiments in the Taylor-Dean system or in the counter-rotating Couette-Taylor system have shown that, spatio-temporal defects were generated periodically in time on the background of traveling vortices. We have found that the dynamics of these defects and many of their features may be described by the one dimensional complex Ginzburg-Landau equation(CGLE) with homogeneous boundary conditions.