Berlin 2012 – scientific programme

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DY: Fachverband Dynamik und Statistische Physik

DY 22: Posters I

DY 22.37: Poster

Wednesday, March 28, 2012, 17:00–19:00, Poster A

Interaction between a scroll wave and a perpendicular gradient — •Patricia Dähmlow and Marcus Hauser — Abteilung Biophysik, Institut für Experimentelle Physik, Otto-von-Guericke-Universität Magdeburg, Germany

Scroll waves are the 3D counterparts of spiral waves occurring in excitable media. They play an important role in the formation of cardiac arrhythmias like ventricular tachycardia and fibrillation. In the heart, gradients are often introduced by the layering of heart tissue; however scroll waves may adopt any orientation with respect to these gradients.

The dynamics of scroll waves is sensitive to gradients of excitability that have a component parallel to the filament of the scroll [1]. Such gradients may induce a twist in the scroll. Using optical tomography, we investigate the interaction of a scroll wave in the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction with a gradient of excitability oriented perpendicularly to the filament. Perturbations of the originally perpendicular orientation between filament and gradient twist the scroll wave. When this process sets in at the two ends of the filament, the scroll wave suffers twists of opposite handiness, which form a nodal plane, where the scroll remains untwisted.

[1] C. Henze, E. Lugosi, A.T. Winfree, Can. J. Phys. 68, 683 (1990)