Spiral Waves in Excitable Media

The beautiful spiral waves of oxidation in the Belousov-Zhabotinskii reaction [20] are the source of many interesting questions about periodic structures in excitable media. Because they are easy to produce and photograph, pictures of these spirals have appeared in a number of popular science oriented magazines. The study of spirals takes on a more personal interest when one realizes that fibrillation and sudden cardiac arrest from heart attacks may also be due to the appearance of rotating spiral waves of electrical activity on the ventricular myocardium [1], [14]. Immediately questions like “How do spirals form?” and “Can Spirals be prevented?” or “Can one predict if a heart attack will be fatal?” spring to mind. Going beyond questions of self preservation, we may also ask about the properties of spirals, such as their wavelength and frequency, or the conditions necessary to. sustain spiral activity in a given medium.