INTERACTION OF LOCALIZED PULSES OF TRAVELING-WAVE CONVECTION WITH PROPAGATING DISTURBANCES

We study the stability of the stationary, spatially localized states of traveling-wave convection recently described by Niemela, Ahlers, and Cannel [Phys. Rev. Lett. 64, 1365 (1990)] and by Anderson and Behringer [Phys. Lett. A 145, 323 (1990)] by bombarding them with propagating wave packets. At sufficiently large incident amplitude, this can lead to the destruction of the localized state and to a transition to a new state. Sufficiently far above the onset of convection, this process is triggered by spontaneously arising propagating fluctuations, causing convection to fill the experimental cell.