Pattern formation on the free surface of a ferrofluid: Spatial dynamics and homoclinic bifurcation

Abstract

We establish the existence of spatially localised one-dimensional free surfaces of a ferrofluid near onset of the Rosensweig instability, assuming a general (nonlinear) magnetisation law. It is shown that the ferrohydrostatic equations can be derived from a variational principle that allows one to formulate them as an (infinite-dimensional) spatial Hamiltonian system in which the unbounded free-surface direction plays the role of time. A centre-manifold reduction technique converts the problem for small solutions near onset to an equivalent Hamiltonian system with finitely many degrees of freedom. Normal-form theory yields the existence of homoclinic solutions to the reduced system, which correspond to spatially localised solutions of the ferrohydrostatic equations.