Measurement of Large Spiral and Target Waves in Chemical Reaction-Diffusion-Advection Systems: Turbulent Diffusion Enhances Pattern Formation

Abstract

In the absence of advection, reaction-diffusion systems are able to organize into spatiotemporal patterns, in particular spiral and target waves. Whenever advection is present that can be parametrized in terms of effective or turbulent diffusion D(*), these patterns should be attainable on a much greater, boosted length scale. However, so far, experimental evidence of these boosted patterns in a turbulent flow was lacking. Here, we report the first experimental observation of boosted target and spiral patterns in an excitable chemical reaction in a quasi-two-dimensional turbulent flow. The wave patterns observed are ~50 times larger than in the case of molecular diffusion only. We vary the turbulent diffusion coefficient D(*) of the flow and find that the fundamental Fisher-Kolmogorov-Petrovsky-Piskunov equation, v(f) proportional sqrt[D(*)], for the asymptotic speed of a reactive wave remains valid. However, not all measures of the boosted wave scale with D(*) as expected from molecular diffusion, since the wave fronts turn out to be highly filamentous.