“…An irregular wave pattern results from breakdown of the local description of an elementary wave pattern in terms of steady supersonic flows. Understanding the physics of such pattern formation and its effects on interface evolution has long been a subject of research, using combinations of theory (von Neumann, 1943;Whitham, 1958Whitham, , 1959Henderson, 1966;Catherasoo and Sturtevant, 1983;Schwendeman, 1988), experiments (Jahn, 1956;Abd-El-Fattah et al, 1976;Abd-El-Fattah and Henderson, 1978a,b;Haas and Sturtevant, 1987;Bourne and Field, 1992;Igra and Takayama, 2003;Takayama, 1987) and numerical simulations (Grove and Menikoff, 1990;Henderson et al, 1991;Liu et al, 2001). Such phenomena take place in numerous settings, a small sampling of which is illustrated in Figs.…”