Stellar oscillons

Ann N Y Acad Sci. 1998 Dec 30:867:298-305. doi: 10.1111/j.1749-6632.1998.tb11265.x.

Abstract

We study the weakly nonlinear evolution of acoustic instability of a plane-parallel polytrope with thermal dissipation in the form of Newton's law of cooling. The most unstable horizontal wavenumbers form a band around zero and this permits the development of a nonlinear pattern theory leading to a complex Ginzburg-Landau equation (CGLE). Numerical solutions for a subcritical, quintic CGLE produce vertically oscillating, localized structures that resemble the oscillons observed in recent experiments of vibrated granular material.