title: Breakup of propagating waves through the development of a transient unexcitable regime.
abstract: Spontaneous breakup of propagating waves was investigated in this paper with a ferroin-catalyzed Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction modified with the inclusion of a second substrate, 1,4-cyclohexanedione (CHD). The presence of CHD, which forms a separate chemical oscillator with acidic bromate, led to the development of a scattered unexcitable regime in the studied medium, where as waves passed through these unexcitable media, the propagation was disrupted, causing the creation of free ends. It thus presents a new avenue through which a chemical wave breaks up to form spirals. By manipulating the concentrations of CHD, sulfuric acid, and bromate, unexcitable regimes of different sizes with different survival times were obtained. Kinetic data on wave speed prior to and after the unexcitable window illustrates that the occurrence of an unexcitable regime is not due to depletion of components needed for wave propagation.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, The University of Windsor, Windsor, Ontario, Canada N9B 3P4.
authors.forename: Vince
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Ruisi
authors.forename: Jichang
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Wang