Period-2 spiral waves supported by nonmonotonic wave dispersion

Okyu Kwon, Tae Yun Kim, and Kyoung J. Lee
Phys. Rev. E 82, 046213 – Published 19 October 2010

Abstract

Rotating spiral waves appear ubiquitously in a wide range of nonlinear systems, and they play important roles in many biological phenomena. Recently, unusual spiral waves, which support period-2 dynamics, have been found in several different systems including cardiac tissues as well as nonlinear chemical reaction-diffusion systems. They are potentially significant as an intermediate dynamic state linking regularly rotating period-1 spiral waves to complex dynamic states such as cardiac fibrillations; for example, it is intrinsic of period-2 spiral waves to have “line defects” and their instability can lead to a spatiotemporal chaos. Previous mathematical models regarding period-2 spiral waves are mostly based on a coupled system of period-2 oscillators, but these are inappropriate for the description of a large class of systems that are composed of (nonoscillatory) excitable elements—a good example being the heart. In this paper we hypothesize that excitable media, which support a nonmonotonic conduction velocity dispersion relation, can sustain period-2 oscillatory spiral waves. We explicitly demonstrate that the new mechanism can create period-2 spirals by computer simulations on a simple mathematical model describing spiral wave front dynamics.

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  • Received 3 June 2010

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.82.046213

©2010 American Physical Society

Authors & Affiliations

Okyu Kwon, Tae Yun Kim, and Kyoung J. Lee*

  • Center for Cell Dynamics and Department of Physics, Korea University, Seoul 136-701, Korea

  • *kyoung@korea.ac.kr

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Issue

Vol. 82, Iss. 4 — October 2010

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