Shu-ichi Kinoshita, Mayuko Iwamoto, Keita Tateishi, Nobuhiko J Suematsu, Daishin Ueyama
Physical review. E, Statistical, nonlinear, and soft matter physics, 87(6) 062815-062815, Jun, 2013 Peer-reviewedLead authorCorresponding author
Spiral waves on excitable media strongly influence the functions of living systems in both a positive and negative way. The spiral formation mechanism has thus been one of the major themes in the field of reaction-diffusion systems. Although the widely believed origin of spiral waves is the interaction of traveling waves, the heterogeneity of an excitable medium has recently been suggested as a probable cause. We suggest one possible origin of spiral waves using a Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction and a discretized FitzHugh-Nagumo model. The heterogeneity of the reaction field is shown to stochastically generate unidirectional sites, which can induce spiral waves. Furthermore, we found that the spiral wave vanished with only a small reduction in the excitability of the reaction field. These results reveal a gentle approach for controlling the appearance of a spiral wave on an excitable medium.