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Updated: Aug 21, 2026

Magnetically Induced Rotating Rayleigh-Taylor Instability
Published on: March 3, 2017
Transverse instability of line defects of period-2 spiral waves
Jin-Sung Park1, Sung-Jae Woo, Kyoung J Lee
1National Creative Research Initiative Center for Neuro-dynamics and Department of Physics, Korea University, Seoul 136-701, Korea.
Abstract:
Spiral waves that arise in period-2 oscillatory media extended in space generically bear "line defects" along which the local kinetics exhibits a period-1 oscillation. Locally, these defect structures can be viewed as a front separating two period-2 oscillatory domains oscillating 2pi out of phase. Here we show that their shape can become sinusoidal with a transverse instability as in bistable fronts. This instability eventually leads to a line-defect filled spatiotemporal chaotic state having erratic proliferations, annihilations, and regenerations of line defects. The same sequence of phenomena is observed in a model reaction-diffusion system as well as in an experimental system.
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