CHIN. PHYS. LETT. Vol. 28, No.

2 (2011) 020504

Spiral Wave Dynamics in a Response System Subjected to a Spiral Wave Forcing

LI Guang-Zhao(), CHEN Yong-Qi(), TANG Guo-Ning()** , LIU Jun-Xian()
College of Physics and Technology, Guangxi Normal University, Guilin 541004

(Received 14 September 2010)

Unidirectional linear error feedback coupling of two excitable medium systems displaying spiral waves is considered. The spiral wave in the response system is thus subjected to a spiral wave forcing. We find that the unidirectional feedback coupling can lead to richer behaviour than the mutual coupling. The spiral wave dynamics in the response system depends on the coupling strength and frequency mismatch. When the coupling strength is small, the feedback coupling induces the drift or meander of the forced spiral wave. When the coupling strength is large enough, the feedback coupling may lead to the transition from spiral wave to anti-target or target-like wave. The generation of anti-target wave in coupled excitable media is observed for the first time. Furthermore, when the coupling strength is strong, the synchronization between two subsystems can be established.

PACS: 05.10.a, 05.45.a, 82.40.CK

DOI: 10.1088/0256-307X/28/2/020504 the response system subjected to an SW forcing. We consider coupled reaction-diffusion systems with noflux boundary where the dynamical equations of the subsystem are proposed by Br and Eiswirth.[6] The model in the dimensionless form is expressed as 1 = 1 (1 , 1 ) + 2 1 , 1 = (1 , 1 ), (1a) (1b)

Spiral waves (SWs) and target waves (TWs) are the most frequently encountered patterns in two-dimensional systems driven away from equilibrium.[15] They have been observed in a large variety of spatiotemporal systems, including biological systems (e.g., the cardiac muscle tissue), physical systems (CO oxidation on platinum), and the chemical reaction diffusion systems (BelousovZhabotinsky reaction), etc. The two types of patterns have been extensively investigated in both excitable and oscillatory media.[615] The drifting, meandering, multi-arm, inwardly rotating and breathing SW patterns have been found successively.[610] The breathing TW and antitarget wave (ATW) have been observed too.[11,12] Recently, coupled nonlinear systems have been widely studied theoretically and experimentally.[1624] In coupled excitable medium systems, for example, Hildebrand et al.[17] investigated experimentally and theoretically the synchronization of two mutually coupled BelousovZhabotinsky systems, and revealed the generalized synchronization of SWs. Yang and Yang[21] investigated the SW dynamics in linearly coupled 2D reaction-diffusion systems, and found that when synchronization of SWs in the two subsystems is established, the two subsystems play different roles in collective dynamics: one subsystem is always dominant and enslaves the other. However, the dynamics of SWs in an excitable medium, which is coupled unidirectionally with other excitable medium exhibiting SW behaviors, has never been studied in the literature. Such a configuration is significant in the cardiac tissue. Therefore, it is quite interesting to understand what would happen for SW dynamics in response systems if the drive and response systems have different parameters. In this Letter, we investigate the SW dynamics in
* Supported ** Email:

2 = 2 (2 , 2 ) + 2 2 + (1 2 ), (1c) 2 = (2 , 2 ), (1d) ) ( 1 + 1,2 (, ) = , (1 ) 1,2 1 < 3 , , 1 (, ) = 1 6.75( 1)2 , 3 1, 1 , > 1, where 2 = 2 /2 + 2 / 2 . The subsystem is excitable for small positive and < 1+. For any given , the isolated two-dimensional system may undergo transition from a rigidly rotating SW to SW breakup when 1,2 is increased.[6] The rotating frequency of the SW always decreases as increases.[21] To numerically simulate the coupled systems, we use the forward Euler method together with a second-order accurate finite-difference method, with fixed time step = 0.02 and spatial step = = 0.4. The system size is set to be , where = 300. Throughout this study, the positive parameters and are fixed at = 0.84 and = 0.07. The value of varies within the range [0.025,0.06] so that there can exist rigidly rotating SW in the subsystem. All the numerical results in this study are checked with finer

by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant Nos 10765002 and 10947011. tangguoning@sohu.com c 2011 Chinese Physical Society and IOP Publishing Ltd

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space grids and smaller time step. We suppose that the subsystem exists an SW and its tip is located at the center of the medium. Thus, the SW in the response system will be subjected to an SW forcing. We first consider the case of 1 < 2 . Generally, the SW dynamics in the response system depends on the coupling strength for given 1,2 . Without loss of generality, we let 1 = 0.025 and 2 = 0.05. For a broad range of ( 0.6), the following scenario is found. When < 0.05, the forced SW keeps its dynamics almost unchanged in respect of its period and wavelength. When 0.05 0.1, the tip of the forced SW drifts slowly along the spiral curve while it moves along a simple cycle (see Fig. 1). Usually, the drift velocity of SW increases as increases while meander of SW becomes weaker. When the drift velocity is large enough, the tip of the forced SW can drift to the boundary of the system, as shown in Fig. 2. From Fig. 2, it is observed that the SW forcing will produce a point vibration source (i.e., TW source) at the location where the tip dissipates. The point vibration source evolves gradually and becomes a line vibration source. The wave produced by the line vibration source is finally transformed into ATW by the SW forcing. When 0.1 < 0.25, the results obtained are similar to those shown Fig. 2. When the coupling strength is large enough, the SW forcing

can directly annihilate the tip of the forced SW and will generate an irregularly circular vibration source around the location where the tip dissipates. The vibration source can generate a TW for 0.25 < 0.35. When 0.35 < 0.55, the circular vibration source generates an inwardly propagating wave while the circular vibration source expands outward until the circular vibration source reaches the boundary, leading to the generation of ATW (see Fig. 3). When > 0.55, the global synchronization between the two SWs can occur. It is obvious that the physical mechanism of generating ATW is different for different coupling strength intervals. That is why the ATW region is separated by the TW region.
(a) (b)

160 150 140 130 140 160

200

160

120 180

80

120

160

200

Fig. 1. Tip trajectory of the SW in the response system with parameters 1 = 0.025 and 2 = 0.05 for (a) = 0.05, (b) = 0.1.

(a)

(b)

(c)

(d)

(e)

(f)

(g)

(h)

Fig. 2. The spatial contour patterns of variable of the response system at different time moments. The parameters 1 = 0.025, 2 = 0.05 and = 0.20 are applied: (a) = 200, (b) = 400, (c) = 480, (d) = 600, (e) = 800, (f) = 1600, (g) = 1602, (h) = 1604. The propagation direction of the ATW is indicated by the arrow, which locates at the same wave train.

(a)

(b)

(c)

(d)

(e)

(f)

(g)

Fig. 3. The spatial contour patterns of variable in the response system at different time moments. The parameters 1 = 0.025, 2 = 0.05 and = 0.55 are taken: (a) = 100, (b) = 200, (c) = 360, (d) = 362, (e) = 500, (f) = 502, (g) = 504. The propagation direction of the ATW is indicated by the arrow, which locates at the same wave train.

In order to investigate the influence of the different values of 2 on SW dynamics in the response system, we change 2 within [0.025,0.06] while keeping 1 = 0.025. The phase diagram regarding different wave patterns is shown in Fig. 4. It is observed that the SW forcing can lead to chaotic meander and linear drift of SWs. Typical tip trajectories of meander-

ing and drifting SWs are shown in Fig. 5. The drift of SW may be explained as follows: The forcing imposed on the tip of the forced SW can be decomposed into normal and tangential components. The normal force component causes the spiral tip to move toward the propagation direction of the drive wave. The tangential force component results in the movement of

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the tip along tangential direction of the drive wave train. Thus, the drift velocity of the spiral tip can be described by the normal velocity and the tangential one . Moreover, the velocities and depend on the medium property and coupling strength. The tip drifts nearly along a straight line once is large and is small. The tip drifts along a spiral line if and are large enough. The meandering SW can be observed in the case of very small and . In order to have an intuitive picture of the drift velocity, the drift velocities of different tip trajectories shown in Fig. 5 are presented as follows. The drift velocities and corresponding to Figs. 5(a), 5(b), 5(c) and 5(d) are (2.776104 , 5.392 104 ), (4.693 103 , 6.037 104 ), (0.097,0.012), and (0.03481,0.2268), respectively. It is observed that big coupling strength can generate large the normal velocity for given 2 .
0.6

The ATW does not appear when 1 2 is large. TW, drifting SW and synchronization of spiral waves are not observed as 1 > 2 and < 0.7. This is because the fast rotation SW always dominates the slow one in the excitable system.
152 150 148 146 144 300 270 240 210 180 150 0 40 80 120 135 146 148 150 152
(c) (a)

162 153 144

(b)

280 210 140 70

135

144

153

162
(d)

50

100

150

200

250

0.5

0.4

Fig. 5. Tip trajectory of meandering and drifting SW in the response system with different 2 and for given 1 = 0.025: (a) 2 = 0.04, = 0.05, (b) 2 = 0.055, = 0.1, (c) 2 = 0.035, = 0.1, (d) 2 = 0.055, = 0.15.

0.3

0.2

0.1

0.0 0.02

0.03

0.04

0.05

0.06

(a)

(b)

(c)

(d)

Fig. 4. The phase diagram revealing different wave patterns: meandering and drifting spiral wave (downtriangle), anti-target wave (solid up-triangle), target wave (circle), global synchronization (pentagon), irregular pattern (square).

Fig. 6. Spatial contour patterns of variable in the response system for (a) (1 , 2 , ) = (0.025, 0.05, 0.3), (b) (1 , 2 , ) = (0.025, 0.05, 0.025), (c) (1 , 2 , ) = (0.025, 0.05, 0.5), (d) (1 , 2 , ) = (0.03, 0.025, 0.65). The propagation direction of the wave is indicated by the arrow.

Figure 4 shows that the SW forcing can induce the transition from SW to TW or ATW when the coupling strength and frequency mismatch are large enough. The shape of TW is shown in Fig. 6(a). It is obvious that the wave looks slightly like a TW. The numerical results indicate that the shape of ATW depends on parameters (1 , 2 , ), i.e., the coupling strength and the frequency mismatch (see Figs. 6(b), 6(c) and 6(d)). Moreover, all ATWs have some shape distortion and imperfection. Now let us consider the case of 1 > 2 . Without loss of generality, we let 2 = 0.025 and 1 = 0.03. We find that the forced SW can still keep the rigid rotating when = 0.65. However, the forced SW would evolve into ATW if = 0.65. The shape of ATW is shown in Fig. 6(d). The forming process of ATW is similar to the case of Fig. 3. The generation of ATW may be due to the resonance that the period of the forced spiral wave is equal to one of drive spiral wave.

In summary, we have studied the spiral wave dynamics in the response system driven by SW forcing. We find that the wave dynamics in the response system is strongly dependent on the coupling strength and frequency mismatch. For weak coupling strength, the SW in the response system stays unchanged in the aspects of frequency and wavelength. For small coupling strength, the tip of the forced SW starts to drift along spiral or straight line. When the coupling strength and frequency mismatch are large enough, the SW forcing leads to the transition from SW to ATW or TW. The generation of ATW in the response systems is observed for the first time. For strong coupling strength, the two subsystems can reach synchronization. We give sincere thanks to Dr. Lingyun Deng and Professor Hong Zhang for the help in the calculation.

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