Professor Alastair Rucklidge

Regular patterns are ubiquitous in nature, and their formation and stability is governed by the intricate interactions of symmetry and nonlinearity. My research aims to understand how the nonlinear interaction of waves in different directions leads to the formation of (for example) quasipatterns (one of the outstanding problems of pattern formation), spatio-temporal chaos and other forms of chaotic dynamics. My work ranges from quantitative explanations of fluid dynamics experiments and large-scale numerical solutions of the equations for convection with magnetic fields, through developing new models for understanding mode interactions, to new ideas on heteroclinic networks, and existence proofs for quasipatterns.