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Published Online January 30, 2003
Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1080207

Reports

Submitted on November 6, 2002
Accepted on January 16, 2003

Taming Winfree Turbulence of Scroll Waves in Excitable Media

Sergio Alonso 1, Francesc Sagués 1, Alexander S. Mikhailov 2*

1 Departament de Química Física, Universitat de Barcelona, Avenida Diagonal 647, 08028 Barcelona, Spain.
2 Abteilung Physikalische Chemie, Fritz-Haber-Institut der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Faradayweg 4-6, 14195 Berlin, Germany.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: mikhailov{at}fhi-berlin.mpg.de.

Winfree turbulence of scroll waves is a special kind of spatiotemporal chaos that exists exclusively in three-dimensional excitable media and is currently considered as one of the principal mechanisms of cardiac fibrillation. A chaotic wave pattern develops then through the negative-tension instability of vortex filaments, which tend to spontaneously stretch, bend, make loops and produce an expanding tangle that fills up the volume. We demonstrate that such turbulence can readily be controlled by weak nonresonant modulation of the medium excitability. Depending on the forcing frequency, both suppression or induction of turbulence can be reached.


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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)