The structure of spatio-temporal defects in a spiral pattern in the Couette–Taylor flow

Disorder in spiral pattern arising in the counter-rotating Couette–Taylor flow has been investigated. It was revealed that in a certain range of flow control parameters, defects may be generated on the background of spirals periodically in time. Spatio-temporal structure of a single defect has been investigated in detail. A simple theoretical model based on asymptotic solution of the complex Ginzburg–Landau equation was proposed to explain characteristics of a defect. We found that, for a given super-criticality, defects appear at a definite value of the spiral wave phase.