Dynamics of dendritic sidebranching in the two-dimensional symmetric model of solidification

Abstract

We study, within a WKB approximation, the evolution of time-dependent deformations of the needle crystal solution of the two-dimensional symmetric model of solidification. We find that perturbations with fixed small frequencies are initially amplified as they propagate from near the tip down the dendrite but ultimately decay. Localized wave packets behave rather differently; the packet continues to grow exponentially as it moves to arbitrarily large distances from the tip. The relevance of these results to sidebranching of dendrites is discussed.