Rotating chemical waves: theory and experiments

Abstract

After a brief introduction in the first theoretic part of this work the geometrical wave theory and its application for rotating waves are discussed. Here the waves are rotating around a circular obstacle which is surrounded by two homogeneous wave conducting regions with different wave velocities. The interface of the inner slow and the outer fast region is also a circle but the two circles (the obstacle and interface) are not concentric. The various asymmetric cases are classified and described theoretically. In the second experimental part chemical waves rotating in a so-called moderately asymmetric reactor are studied. A piecewise homogeneous wave conducting medium is created applying a novel reactor design. All the three theoretical cases of the moderately asymmetric arrangement are realized experimentally and qualitative and quantitative comparison of these results with the theoretical predictions show a good agreement.