Spontaneous suppression of spiral turbulence based on feedback strategy

Abstract

Control of defect-mediated turbulence or spiral turbulence has been a subject of pattern dynamics study in the last two decades. As a result, many control strategies has been proposed in theory and tested in computer simulation. Here we propose a self-regulation system that can spontaneously eliminate topological defects in the reaction-diffusion system that suffers from the Doppler instability. The core of the self-regulation scheme is a feedback introduction of local inhomogeneities around spiral tips. We used modified FitzHugh-Nagumo model in computer simulations and light-sensitive Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction in experiments to test the functionality of the proposed system. We found that if the inhomogeneities were induced on the spiral tips once they were identified, the spiral can be exterminated thus the spiral turbulence can be controlled. Compared with the studies on anatomic obstacles in heart, this self-regulation model may provide a possible mechanism for spontaneous termination of cardiac fibrillation.