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Mechanism of standing wave patterns in cardiac muscle
Seiji Takagi1, Alain Pumir, Lorenz Kramer
1Institut Non Linéaire de Nice, 1361 route des Lucioles, F-06560, Valbonne, France.
Physical Review Letters
|April 12, 2003
Abstract:
Recent experiments [R. A. Gray, Phys. Rev. Lett. 87, 168104 (2001)]] have revealed striking standing wave patterns in cardiac muscle. In excitable media, such as cardiac tissue where colliding waves annihilate, standing wave patterns result from a fully nonlinear mechanism. We present a possible physical mechanism explaining these patterns. The phenomenon does not depend on the precise excitable model chosen. Analogies are drawn with weak links in superconductors, and phase-slip solutions in the Ginzburg-Landau equations.