Assume . The symbol in this part is the convection roll amplitude, not the Rayleigh number of the previous part. Set for the algebra. The periodic boundary condition requires and modulation wavenumbers . The conserved-field equation preserves the imposed zero mean of , since the integral of an derivative over a period vanishes.
Equating the coefficients after linearization of the convection amplitude coupled to a conserved field gives
The conjugate sideband is needed because the variation of couples a perturbation to its complex conjugate. Put , . The linear operator on is
Its characteristic polynomial, expressed conveniently without expanding every coefficient, is
At it has roots . The phase root is neutral; the uniform root is excluded by the prescribed zero-flux-perturbation mean. Nonzero arbitrarily long-wave modes remain allowed on a sufficiently large domain. For fixed , the two roots tending to zero have at simple limiting roots. Dividing the polynomial by yields
Repeated limiting roots may require a further expansion, but do not affect the strict instability criterion. If , the constant term is negative and the two real roots have opposite signs. The positive root gives a growing long-wave sideband instability. Using gives
This is sufficient for instability when a sufficiently small nonzero allowed is available. It is not an unconditional instability theorem for every fixed finite period. For example , , , satisfy the inequality, but the nonzero allowed obey . Their roots are and , all negative. The prescribed zero mean removes the uniform flux root and the remaining uniform phase is merely neutral. The corrected conclusion is the long-wave instability with a conserved mean field, with domain size and mode availability stated.