Dynamics and Selection of Giant Spirals in Rayleigh-Benard Convection
  For Rayleigh-Benard convection of a fluid with Prandtl number \sigma \approx 1, we report experimental and theoretical results on a pattern selection mechanism for cell-filling, giant, rotating spirals. We show that the pattern selection in a certain limit can be explained quantitatively by a phase-diffusion mechanism. This mechanism for pattern selection is very different from that for spirals in excitable media. 
Brendan B. Plapp (1), David A. Egolf (1), Eberhard Bodenschatz (1),   Werner Pesch (2) ((1) Cornell University; (2) Universi...