title: Information operations with an excitable field.
abstract: It is well established that a traveling wave can be generated on an excitable field, which is described with a pair of partial differential equations for an activator and inhibitor. In the present paper, we use a numerical simulation to show that the traveling wave, or signaling pulse, can be transmitted from an excitable field to an opposing excitable field via an intervening passive diffusion field in a characteristic manner depending on the spatial geometry of the excitable fields. Using such characteristics, it is possible to design various kinds of logic gates together with a time-sequential memory device. Thus, these functions can perform time-sensitive operations in the absence of any controlling clock. It may be possible to accomplish these computations with excitable fields in an actual system, or to create a "field computer" composed of electronic active and passive units.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Graduate School of Science, Kyoto University, Kyoto 606-8502, Japan.
authors.forename: I
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Motoike
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Yoshikawa