Relative stabilities of metastable states of convecting charged-fluid systems by computer simulation

Dissipative structures in charged-fluid layer systems have been investigated by computer simulations. In a supercritical condition the system takes a convective state. It was found that the steady convective states were highly degenerate and one of the states gave the maximum charge transport. Relative stabilities of such metastable states were examined by disturbing each state. These investigations revealed that the most stable convective state corresponded to the state of maximum charge transport within the computational error, supporting the maximum-entropy-production hypothesis for a multi-stable-state system.