title: Excitable media in a chaotic flow.
abstract: The response to a localized perturbation of an excitable medium under stirring by chaotic advection is investigated. It is found that below a critical stirring rate a localized perturbation produces a coherent global excitation of the system. For very slow stirring, however, the coherence of the global excitation is gradually lost. We propose a simple model to describe the effect of the flow on the excitable dynamics, and explain the observed behavior as a consequence of a steady excited filament state found in the reduced problem.
authors.affiliation: Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, University of Cambridge, Silver Street, Cambridge CB3 9EW, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Z
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Neufeld
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D004058:Diffusion; D009038:Motion; D017711:Nonlinear Dynamics