Emergence, Competition and Dynamical Stabilization of Dissipative Rotating Spiral Waves in an Excitable Medium: A Computational Model Based on Cellular Automata (0805.1319v1)

Abstract: We report some qualitatively new features of emergence, competition and dynamical stabilization of dissipative rotating spiral waves (RSWs) in the cellular-automaton model of laser-like excitable media proposed in arXiv:cond-mat/0410460v2 ; arXiv:cond-mat/0602345 . Part of the observed features are caused by unusual mechanism of excitation vorticity when the RSW's core get into the surface layer of an active medium. Instead of the well known scenario of RSW collapse, which takes place after collision of RSW's core with absorbing boundary, we observed complicated transformations of the core leading to regeneration (nonlinear "reflection" from the boundary) of the RSW or even to birth of several new RSWs in the surface layer. Computer experiments on bottlenecked evolution of such the RSW-ensembles (vortex matter) are reported and a possible explanation of real experiments on spin-lattice relaxation in dilute paramagnets is proposed on the basis of an analysis of the RSWs dynamics. Chimera states in RSW-ensembles are revealed and compared with analogous states in ensembles of nonlocally coupled oscillators. Generally, our computer experiments have shown that vortex matter states in laser-like excitable media have some important features of aggregate states of the usual matter.