 Five-mode vertical-field magnetoconvection

A Galerkin method approximation can retain one roll streamfunction mode, two temperature modes and two magnetic-flux perturbation modes in vertical-field magnetoconvection. Projection onto these five modes, rather than pointwise equality of the truncated fields, gives a closed system of five ordinary differential equations. Products generate higher spatial harmonics that are discarded by orthogonal projection. The system has symmetry $(a,b,c,d,e)\mapsto (-a,-b,c,-d,e)$ and hence admits paired steady roll branches.