We studied spiral wave dynamics in an oscillatory reaction diffusion system. We find a new phenomenon: without the appearance of any global modulation mode, stable spiral waves break up directly. By investigating the one-dimensional version of the system and the isolated local dynamics, we find that the unstable focus in the local dynamics plays an important role. For different boundary conditions (BCs), we find a transition between spiral waves and traveling waves for periodic BCs and drifting spiral wave for no-flux BC.

• Received 21 January 2003

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.68.066312