We have observed the transient dynamics in nematic electroconvection during a sudden change in the driving voltage. The steady state dynamics of nematic electroconvection during a constant driving voltage are well characterized examples of spatiotemporal chaos, and thus are useful for the study of chaotic transients. For a set of starting conditions, we were able to show that the system can enter a long-lived transient state with a larger power dissipation rate. This transient state decays through the skew varicose instabilities into steady state defect turbulence. We observed the onset of both Eckhaus and skew varicose instabilities, interpret this transition in the framework of dynamical crisis, and quantify the transition through the evolution of the information entropy in the images as well as the power dissipated by the sample. We identify this long-lived but transient state as originating from the structure of the convective rolls in the initial state and hypothesize that the exploitation of transient states such as these may occur in natural systems and could be leveraged for industrial processing.
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