The Ginzburg–Landau equation, named after Vitaly Ginzburg and Lev Landau, describes the nonlinear evolution of small disturbances near a finite wavelength bifurcation from a stable to an unstable state of a system. At the onset of finite wavelength bifurcation, the system becomes unstable for a critical wavenumber ${\displaystyle k_{c}}$ which is non-zero. In the neighbourhood of this bifurcation, the evolution of disturbances is characterised by the particular Fourier mode for ${\displaystyle k_{c}}$ with slowly varying amplitude ${\displaystyle A}$. The Ginzburg–Landau equation is the governing equation for ${\displaystyle A}$. The unstable modes can either be non-oscillatory (stationary) or oscillatory.^[1][2]

For non-oscillatory bifurcation, ${\displaystyle A}$ satisfies the real Ginzburg–Landau equation

${\displaystyle {\frac {\partial A}{\partial t}}=\nabla ^{2}A+A-A|A|^{2}}$

which was first derived by Alan C. Newell and John A. Whitehead^[3] and by Lee Segel^[4] in 1969. For oscillatory bifurcation, ${\displaystyle A}$ satisfies the complex Ginzburg–Landau equation

${\displaystyle {\frac {\partial A}{\partial t}}=(1+ic_{1})\nabla ^{2}A+A-(1-ic_{3})A|A|^{2}}$

which was first derived by Keith Stewartson and John Trevor Stuart in 1971.^[5]

See also

• Davey–Stewartson equation
• Stuart–Landau equation
• Gross–Pitaevskii equation

References