Sustained spatio-temporal chaotic flow at onset of electroconvection in nematic liquid crystals

In the presence of a strong magnetic field parallel to the applied electric field, electrohydrodynamic convection (EHC) in nematic liquid crystals is a pattern forming system with weakly broken rotational symmetry in the plane parallel to the magnetic field. In this system, the first instability observed is to a spatio-temporally chaotic state, in qualitative agreement with recent theoretical results. We report experimental results demonstrating sustained time dependence and spatial disorder immediately above the subcritical transition from the quiescent state in this system.