Effect of a modified sinusoidal forcing on spiral wave in a simulated reaction-diffusion system.

Abstract

Spiral waves are often found in excitable media. In the hearts, they are abnormal forms of action potential propagation. Under an external forcing, the spiral waves drift and are subsequently terminated at the boundary. Spiral waves can be studied in simulations using a discrete reaction-diffusion system; thereby the time step must not exceed a numerical stability limit (ts). In this article, we present the dynamics of spiral waves in a simulated system under an external forcing as a modified sinusoidal function of time. The spiral waves are forced to drift along a straight line with a velocity and an angle depending on the time step. An optimization study provides the optimal time step of 0.2ts, where further reductions of the time step do not alter the drifting of the spiral waves.