Lamellar pattern formation in small-world media

Numerical and analytical techniques are used to investigate the effects of quenched disorder of small-world networks on the phase ordering dynamics of lamellar patterns as modeled by the Swift–Hohenberg equation. Morphologies for small and large values of the network randomness are quite different. It is found that addition of shortcuts to an underlying regular lattice makes the growth of domains evolving from random initial conditions much slower at late times. As the randomness increases, the evolution is eventually frozen.