Boundary-driven anomalous spirals in oscillatory media

David A. Kessler, Herbert Levine

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

2 Scopus citations

Abstract

We study a heretofore ignored class of spiral patterns in oscillatory media as characterized by the complex Landau-Ginzburg model. These spirals emerge from modulating the growth rate as a function of r, thereby turning off the instability at large r. They are uniquely determined by matching to this outer condition, lifting a degeneracy in the set of steady-state solutions of the original equations. Unlike the well-studied spiral which acts as a wave source, has a simple core structure and is insensitive to the details of the boundary on which no-flux conditions are imposed, these new spirals are wave sinks, have non-monotonic wavefront curvature near the core, and can be patterned by the form of the spatial boundary. We predict that these anomalous spirals could be produced in nonlinear optics experiments via spatially modulating the gain of the medium.

Original languageEnglish
Article number063026
JournalNew Journal of Physics
Volume19
Issue number6
DOIs
StatePublished - Jun 2017

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 IOP Publishing Ltd and Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft.

Funding

The research ofDAKis supported by the US-Israel Binational Science Foundation under grant 2015619. The research of HL is supported by the National Science Foundation Center for Theoretical Biological Physics (Grant NSF PHY-1427654).We also gratefully acknowledge the hospitality of the Aspen Center for Physics, where this work was started.

FundersFunder number
US-Israel Binational Science Foundation2015619
Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences1427654
Center for Theoretical Biological PhysicsNSF PHY-1427654

    Keywords

    • complex Ginzburg-Landau equation
    • frequency selection
    • oscillatory media
    • spiral waves

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