Colonies of threaded rings in excitable media

Maucher, Fabian; Sutcliffe, Paul

Abstract

A thring is a recent addition to the zoo of spiral wave phenomena found in excitable media and consists of a scroll ring that is threaded by a pair of counter-rotating scroll waves. This arrangement behaves as a particle that swims through the medium. Here, we present results on the dynamics, interaction, and collective behavior of several thrings via numerical simulation of the reaction-diffusion equations that model thrings created in chemical experiments. We reveal an attraction between two thrings that leads to a stable bound pair that thwarts their individual locomotion. Furthermore, such a pair emits waves at a higher frequency than a single thring, which protects the pair from the advances of any other thring and rules out the formation of a triplet bound state. As a result, the long-term evolution of a colony of thrings ultimately yields an unusual frozen nonequilibrium state consisting of a collection of pairs accompanied by isolated thrings that are inhibited from further motion by the waves emanating from the pairs.

Citation

Maucher, F., & Sutcliffe, P. (2020). Colonies of threaded rings in excitable media. Physical review E: Statistical, nonlinear, and soft matter physics, 102(1), Article 010601(R). https://doi.org/10.1103/physreve.102.010601

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jun 15, 2020
• Online Publication Date: Jul 2, 2020
• Publication Date: 2020-07
• Deposit Date: Jul 9, 2020
• Publicly Available Date: Jul 9, 2020
• Journal: Physical review . E, Statistical, nonlinear, and soft matter physics
• Print ISSN: 1539-3755
• Electronic ISSN: 1550-2376
• Publisher: American Physical Society
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 102
• Issue: 1
• Article Number: 010601(R)
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/physreve.102.010601