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Updated: Aug 19, 2026

Measurements of Waves in a Wind-wave Tank Under Steady and Time-varying Wind Forcing
Published on: February 13, 2018
Suppression of scroll wave turbulence by noise
S Alonso1, J M Sancho, F Sagués
1Departament de Química Física, Universitat de Barcelona, Avenida Diagonal 647, 08028 Barcelona, Spain. s.alonso@qf.ub.es
Abstract:
Rotating scroll waves are dynamical spatiotemporal structures characteristic of three-dimensional active media. It is well known that, under low excitability conditions, scroll waves develop an intrinsically unstable dynamical regime that leads to a highly disorganized pattern of wave propagation. Such a "turbulent" state bears some resemblance to fibrillation states in cardiac tissue. We show here that this unstable regime can be controlled by using a spatially distributed random forcing superimposed on a control parameter of the system. Our results are obtained from numerical simulations but an explicit analytical argument that rationalizes our observations is also presented.
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