Kinematics of rigidly rotating spiral waves (Q2389371)

The main aim of this article is to construct a simplified description of a rigidly rotating spiral wave in an unbounded medium by applying the free-boundary approach. As the concrete example the authors study the generic, two-variable reaction-diffusion model \[ \frac{\partial u}{\partial t}=D\nabla^2u+F(u,v), \eqno{(1)} \] \[ \frac{\partial v}{\partial t}=\epsilon k_rG(u,v), \eqno{(2)} \] where the variables \(u(x,y,t)\) and \(v(x,y,t)\) represent, respectively, the activator and the inhibitor in a two-dimensional medium with a diffusion constant \(D\). In many applications the value \(k_r\) is fixed as \(1\) and the parameter \(\epsilon\) is small. Due to this the activator \(u\) is considered as a fast variable in comparison to the slow inhibitor \(v\).