Sources and sinks of wave patterns

Abstract We analyze in this paper the behavior of sources and sinks of traveling waves in one-dimensional systems. It is shown that the presence of these defects induces a selection of the wavenumber in the bulk of the pattern itself. This selection mechanism can drive the pattern into the Benjamin-Fier-Eckhaus unstable regime generating spatio-temporal chaos with space-time dislocations. In the convectively unstable regime, the source of group perturbation becomes a noise amplifier.