We report the occurrence of flow reversals induced by the attractor-merging crisis in Rayleigh-Bénard convection of electrically conducting low-Prandtl-number fluids in the presence of a uniform external horizontal magnetic field.… Click to show full abstract
We report the occurrence of flow reversals induced by the attractor-merging crisis in Rayleigh-Bénard convection of electrically conducting low-Prandtl-number fluids in the presence of a uniform external horizontal magnetic field. The simultaneous collision of two coexisting chaotic attractors with an unstable fixed point and its associated stable manifold takes place in the higher-dimensional phase space of the system, leading to a single merged chaotic attractor. The effect of strength of the magnetic field on the flow reversal phenomena is also explored in detail.
               
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