Spiral waves within a bistability parameter region of an excitable medium

Spiral waves are a well-known and intensively studied dynamic phenomenon in excitable media of various types. Most studies have considered an excitable medium with a single stable resting state. However, spiral waves can be maintained in an excitable medium with bistability. Our calculations, performed using the widely used Barkley model, clearly show that spiral waves in the bistability region exhibit unique properties. For example, a spiral wave can either rotate around a core that is in an unexcited state, or the tip of the spiral wave describes a circular trajectory located inside an excited region. The boundaries of the parameter regions with positive and "negative" cores have been defined numerically and analytically evaluated. It is also shown that the creation of a positive or "negative" core may depend on the initial conditions, which leads to hysteresis of spiral waves. In addition, the influence of gradient flow on the dynamics of the spiral wave, which is related to the tension of the scroll wave filaments in a three-dimensional medium, is studied.

Complex-Periodic Spiral Waves Induced by Linearly Polarized Electric Field in the Excitable Medium

Complex-periodic spiral waves are investigated extensively in the oscillatory medium. In this paper, the linearly polarized electric field (LPEF) is employed to induce complex-periodic spiral waves in the excitable medium with abnormal dispersion. As the amplitude of LPEF is increased beyond a threshold, the simple-periodic spiral wave converts into an irregularly complex-periodic one, in which, the local dynamics exhibit several regular spikes followed by one missed spiking period. Furthermore, with the increase of the LPEF amplitude, the missed spiking period follows different numbers of regular spikes [so-called period-1 (P-1), period-2 (P-2), etc.], even a mix of different periods. Meanwhile, the wavelength of the spiral wave transits from a short to a longer one. The pure-periodic (from P-6 to P-2) spirals generally contain defect lines, across which the phase of local oscillation changes by [Formula: see text]. In contrast, there is no defect line in the mixed-periodic spiral waves. This finding indicates that the defect line is not a necessary feature for complex-periodic spiral waves. Moreover, three types of tip trajectories of pure-periodic spiral waves are identified depending on the periods. That is, the outward-petal meandering, the outward-petal meandering with slow modulation, and drifting tip motion, and the tip trajectories could be used to distinguish them from the complex-oscillatory spiral waves.