Domain Coarsening in Electroconvection

Abstract

We report on experimental measurements of the growth of regular domains evolving from an irregular pattern in electroconvection. The late-time growth of the domains is consistent with the size of the domains scaling as $t^n$. We use two isotropic measurements of the domain size: the structure factor and the domain wall length. Measurements using the structure factor are consistent with $t^{1/5}$ growth. Measurements using the domain wall length are consistent with $t^{1/4}$ growth. One source of this discrepancy is the fact that the distribution of local wavenumbers is approximately independent of the domain size. In addition, we measure the anisotropy of the growing domains.