Order-Disorder Transition in Capillary Ripples

A well-defined order-disorder transition occurs in the capillary waves on a fluid layer driven by vertical oscillation. The transition is characterized by a sharp decline in both the translational correlation length and the long-range orientational order of the pattern, and an onset in the characteristic frequency f* of chaotic fluctuations varying approximately as (A-Ad)1/2, for driving amplitudes above a threshold Ad. The transition is geometry dependent even when the container size is 50-100 times the wavelength.