Chemically-driven solitons

At the interface between two immiscible fluids, the solutal Marangoni effect initializes an “interfacial engine” that drives motion through coupling between the hydrodynamics and surfactant transport. Whereas linear analyses of such systems have shown the existence of various oscillatory regimes for both longitudinal and transverse wave motion, little has been done to study these problems in the nonlinear setting. In this talk, we present a systematic derivation of a complex Ginzburg-Landau equation for one of these systems. Its solutions provide mathematical evidence for the existence of dissipative solitons driven by chemistry effects. We also identify the physical parameter regime that permits such a weakly nonlinear analysis, which can offer guidance to an experimental search for solitons.